THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A.KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
MISSIONARIES AFTER THE 
 APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 THREE ADORES S.ES 
 
 BY 
 
 EDWARD (IRVING. 
 
 TIENTSIN: 
 
 TIENTSIN PRINTING COMPANY. 
 
8V2070 
 
 in 
 
 7 
 
 NOTE ON REPUBLICATION. 
 
 DEAR READER, 
 
 A JO great 'work is ever done without much pain. No high art is 
 ever perfected without much practice. Pains are much lessened an I 
 practice much facilitated by judicious lessons. Without them there is much 
 waste and failure. 
 
 In Missions we have very few hand-books of great value though Early 
 Medieval and Modern Missions contain most instructive lessons. There we 
 can trace how the Spirit of God led His chosen apostles to adopt different 
 methods in different circumstances. 
 
 It is true we have invaluable helps in several excellent works published 
 during the last twenty years. But I know of none dealing with the MOST 
 FUNDAMENTAL principles of Christian Missions so applicable to all times 
 and circumstances that will for a moment compare with this of Edward 
 Irving S on MISSIONARIES AFTER THE APOSTOLIC SCHOOL, With 
 the few modifications which change of circumstances may require, it stands 
 out alone among Missionary A ddr esses like the sun among the stars, having 
 a marvellous, unique, and most blessed effect on most of those who read it 
 devoutly. 
 
 Thanks to the generosity of a brother missionary, I am able to send some 
 copies to every Mission in China, India, and Japan. 
 
 If you Jind good in it we shall be much pleased if you will kindly lend it 
 to others. 
 
 Thus we send it forth, praying that it may be the means of much blessing 
 to our brethren wherever it goes. 
 
 TIMOTHY RICHARD. 
 Peking, December, 1887. 
 
 M309462 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 HAVING been requested by the LONDON MISSIONARY SOCIETY 
 to preach upon the occasion of their last anniversary, I willingly 
 complied, without much thought of what I was undertaking ; but when 
 I came to reflect upon the sacredness and importance of the cause given 
 into my hands, and the dignity of the audience before which I had to 
 discourse, it seemed to my conscience that I had undertaken a duty 
 full of peril and responsibility, for which I ought to prepare myself 
 with every preparation of the mind and of the spirit. To this end, 
 retiring into the quiet and peaceful country, among a society of men 
 devoted to every good and charitable work, I searched the Scriptures 
 in secret ; and in their pious companies conversed of the convictions 
 which were secretly brought to my mind concerning the missionary 
 work. And thus, not without much prayer to God and self-devotion, I 
 meditated those things which I delivered in public before the reverend 
 and pious men who had honoured me with so great a trust. 
 
 At that time I had no design whatever of giving to my thoughts any 
 wider publicity, and was prepared to resist any application which might 
 haply be mide to me to do so ; but an application presented itself from 
 a quarter which I was not prepared to resist, my own sympathies 
 with a heart-broken widow, ths widow of JOHN SMITH, the missionary, 
 who had died in prison under a sentence of death, which the good 
 sense and good feeling of England united in pronouncing to be unjust . 
 Inasmuch as he suffered unjustly, I viewed him as a martyr, though 
 condemned, like his Lord, with a show of law. And being unable in 
 any other way to testify my sense of his injuries, and my feeling of the 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 duty of the Christian Church to support his widow, I resolved that I 
 would do so by devoting to her use this fruit of my mind and spirit. 
 Thus moved, I gave notice that I would publish the discourse, and give 
 the proceeds of the sale into her hands. 
 
 When again I came to meditate upon this second engagement which 
 I had come under, and took into consideration the novelty of the 
 doctrine which I was about to promulgate, I set myself to examine the 
 whole subject anew, and opened my ear to every objection which I 
 could hear from any quarter, nothing repelled by the uncharitable con- 
 structions and ridiculous accounts which were often rendered of my 
 views. The effect of which was to convince me that the doctrine 
 which I had advanced was true, but of so novel and unpalatable a 
 character, that if it was to do any good, or even to live, it must be 
 brought before the public with a more minute investigation of the 
 Scriptures, and fuller development of reason, than could be contained 
 within the compass of a single discourse. To give it this more con- 
 vincing and more living form was the occupation of my little leisure 
 from pastoral and ministerial duties, rendered still less, during the 
 summer months, by the indifference of my bodily health. And it was 
 not until the few weeks of rest and recreation which I enjoyed in the 
 autumn, that I was able to perceive the true form and full extent of the 
 argument which is necessary to make good my position. Which things 
 I mention, in order to explain the delay which has taken place in the 
 publication. 
 
 The doctrine, of which I have convinced myself out of the Scrip- 
 tures, and which I propose by the grace of God to demonstrate and 
 commend, in a series of orations, is contained in the tenth chapter of 
 Matthew, the sixth chapter of Mark, the ninth and tenth chapters of 
 Luke ; which text I have prefixed to the work under the name of 
 " THE MISSIONARY CHARTER." The twelve apostles and seventy 
 disciples, acting upon this commission, I consider as a school of 
 missionaries, from which we should take the character of the missionary, 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 the nature of his qualifications, and the methods of his proceeding, with 
 the same exactness with which we take the character of a pastor and 
 the nature of his duties, the character of a private Christian and the 
 nature of his duties, from the other constitutions of the Lord and 
 His apostles : and under this conviction, I have entitled my work, 
 " FOR MISSIONARIES AFTER THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL." Of how 
 many addresses the work will consist, I am not able at present to 
 determine, but the plan of it, as well as the occasion, is fully contained 
 in the Introduction, which I have entitled " THE OCCASION AND 
 METHOD OF THE ADDRESSES." 
 
 This is the age expediency, both in the Church and out of the 
 Church, and all institutions are modelled upon the principles of ex- 
 pediency, and carried into effect by the rules of prudence. I remember, 
 in this metropolis, to hive heard it uttered with great applause in a 
 public meeting, where the heads and leaders of the religious world 
 were present, " If I were asked what was the first qualification for a 
 missionary, I would say, Prudence ; and what the second ? Prudence ; 
 and what the third ? still I would answer, Prudence." I trembled 
 while I heard, not with indignation but with horror and apprehension, 
 what the end would be of a spirit which I have since found to be the 
 presiding genius of our activity, the ruler of the ascendant. Now, if I 
 read the eleventh chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, I find 
 that from the time of Abel to the time of Christ, it was by faith that 
 the cloud of witnesses witnessed their good confession and so mightily 
 prevailed ; which faith is there defined the substance of things hoped 
 for, the evidence of things not seen ; whereas prudence or expediency is 
 the substance of things present, the evidence of things seen. So that 
 faith and prudence are opposite poles in the soul, the one attracting to 
 it all things spiritual and divine, the other all things sensual and earthy. 
 This expediency hath banished the soul of patriotic eloquence from our 
 senate, the spirit of high equity from our legislation, self-denying 
 wisdom from our philosophy, and of our poetry it hath dipt the angel 
 
g PREFACE. 
 
 wing and forced it to creep along the earth. And if we look not to it, 
 it will strangle faith and make void the reality of the things which are 
 not seen, which are the only things that are real and cannot be removed. 
 Money, money, money, is the universal cry. Mammon hath gotten 
 the victory, and may say triumphantly, (nay, he may keep silence and 
 the servants of Christ will say it for him,) " Without me ye can do 
 nothing." 
 
 This evil bent of prudence to become the death of all ideal and in- 
 visible things, whether poetry, sentiment, heroism, disinterestedness, or 
 faith, it is the gre.it prerogative of religious faith to withstand, because 
 religious faith is the only form of the ideal which hath the assurance 
 from he iven of a present blessing and an everlasting reward. Poetry 
 is a tender delicate plant, which seeketh solitary culture, and ill en- 
 dureth the rough handling of utility. And sentiment is a flower which 
 vanish eth into beautiful colours and sweet odours that moment it is 
 placed by the side of politics and economics and chrestomathics, and 
 such other thistle-like productions of the mind, (if indeed they belong 
 not rather to the sense.) And heroism and patriotism and virtue, and 
 other forms of disinterestedness, having no exchangeable value in the 
 market-place, must keep at home in books or be shewn only in family 
 circles, like the antiquated dresses of our grandfathers and grandmothers, 
 with whom the things so named were in fashion. Butjai.'/i is born 
 to brave contempt, to defy power, to bear persecution, and endure the 
 loss of all things. And in doing so, faith will overthrow the idol of 
 expediency, and recover those heavenly and angelic forms of the natural 
 man, poetry, sentiment, honour, patriotism, and virtue, which the 
 worshippers of the idol have offered at the idol's shrine. 
 
 And truth will not retaliate upon prudence the evil aim which she 
 hath bent against her and all her daughters : but, upon the other hand, 
 will bestow even upon prudence a heavenly form. For faith is the 
 substance of things hoped for, and therefore is ever looking onward ; 
 
PREFACE. g 
 
 it is the evidence of things unseen, and is therefore ever looking beyond 
 the present. Futurity is its dwelling-place. And, therefore, as it 
 grows in the soul, it makes it full, of forecast and consideration. And 
 forecast and consideration being in the soul, it must be prudent, 
 provident and prudent, with a true wisdom, which, making its calcula- 
 tions for eternity, applies them also to time. Hence it is written, 
 that godliness hath the promise of the life that now is as well as of the 
 life that is to come. Hence, also, the moment you make a poor man 
 religious, you make him sober and economical and prudent. Hence, 
 also, the most faithful and religious nation upon the earth, is also the 
 most prudent and prosperous on the earth. So that prudence, in the 
 end, will grow upon that same stem whereon grow poetry, sentiment, 
 honour, patriotism, virtue, and every other form of invisible truth 
 upon the stem of that tree whose leaves are for the healing of the 
 nations. 
 
 If you thus make a stand for the dignity of faith alone, and shew, 
 out of the Scriptures, what in all ages it hath accomplished for the 
 well-being of man, in the teeth of expediency and power and wealth, 
 by no ministry or help but that of all-prevailing truth ; lo ! even the 
 faithful rise upon you like locusts and cry, But these Scripture-men 
 had miracles, and were the mighty power of God ; what are we that 
 we should liken ourselves to them ? They have their refuge in the 
 physical power of a miracle, another form of the doctrine of 
 expediency, \\hich must have a solution of every difficulty from the 
 visible. The consistency of the Christian doctrine with everlasting 
 truth is nothing ; the more than chivalrous, the divine intrepidity 
 and disinterestedness of its teachers is nothing ; the response of every 
 conscience to the word of the preacher is nothing ; the promise of 
 God's Spirit is nothing ; it is all to be resolved by the visible work, 
 the outward show of a miracle. This was the only point on which 
 the gospel came into contact with the visible ; and expediency having 
 corrupted the mind of this age, to look for the cause and effect of 
 
JO PREFACE. 
 
 everything in the visible, they at once cry out with one voice, The 
 gospel owed its success in the first ages wholly to this, or to this almost 
 wholly; but for us we must accommodate ourselves to the absence of 
 these supernatural means, and go about the work in a reasonable pru- 
 dent way, if we would succeed in it; calculate it as the merchant does 
 an adventure ; set it forth as the statesman doth a colony ; raise the ways 
 and means within the year, and expend them within the year ; and so 
 go on as long as we can get our accounts to balance. 
 
 Into this exaggeration of miracles, out of which I foresee the chief 
 objection to the doctrine of the addresses now published, I enter not 
 further at present, having the whole subject before me in the next head 
 of discourse, to which I shall address myself as soon as leisure is afforded 
 me, and in which I shall do my endeavour to put the question of the 
 primitive success of the gospel upon its proper basis, the character of 
 the doctrine and the character of the preachers of the doctrine. The 
 Tews required a sign, (that is, miracles), and the Greeks sought after 
 wisdom, but it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save 
 them that believe. 
 
 This unfounded reference of everything peculiar to the primitive 
 times, to the influence of miracles, not only draws an impassable gulf 
 betwixt our sympathies and the actions of Christ and the apostles, 
 making their example of little or none effect, but it hath brought in 
 the notion that certain offices have altogether ceased in the Church ; 
 and to many cradled in these current ideas, it will seem little short of 
 blasphemy in me to have referred the modern missionaries to the 
 apostles as their only patterns. And the same horror would arise in 
 pious minds, if I were to say that the preacher here at home is no 
 other office than that of the ancient prophet to the land of Israel. And 
 yet both these positions I have the hardihood to assert, and hope to be 
 able to demonstrate to the Church. Those five offices mentioned by 
 the apostle in the Epistle to the Ephesians, " apostles, prophets, evan- 
 gelists, pastors, and teachers," are not offices for a time but for all 
 
PREFACE. n 
 
 times, denoting the five great divisions of duty necessary for the pros- 
 perity of the Church ; " apostles," those sent out to preach the gospel 
 unto the people .who know it not ; " prophets," those who are to pro- 
 phesy in the midst of the people who know it but obey it not, to call 
 them to repentance, and to read out their doom if they repent not ; 
 "evangelists," those who are to build up in knowledge and faith, com- 
 fort and charity, those who already do believe the gospel ; " pastors," 
 those who are shepherds over a flock, and guide every one in the way, 
 teaching them from house to house, and communing with their souls ; 
 " teachers," or doctors, whose office, according to the second book of 
 the Discipline of the Church of Scotland, is u to open up the mind of 
 the Spirit of God in the Scriptures, simply, without such application 
 as the ministers use, to the end that the faithful may be instructed, 
 and some doctrine taught, and that the purity of the gospel be not 
 corrupted through ignorance or evil opinions." These five offices arise 
 out of the everlasting necessities of the Church. When there are no 
 heathen, the apostolic office will decease ; when there are no luke- 
 warm, backsliding, or rebellious hearers and professors of the truth, 
 the prophetic office will cease ; and when there are no popular preju- 
 dices of ignorance, or heresies of error, or learned oppositions, the 
 office of the doctor will cease ; and then there will be no need save of 
 the evangelist and the pastor. But as this bright period is remote, and 
 the heathen abound upon the earth, and those who have but a name 
 to live abound in Christendom, and almost every learned man is a 
 professed or disguised disbeliever and gainsayer, these offices must 
 continue to exist, and officers must arise to bear them, whether they 
 assume the name or not ; otherwise the Church will contract her 
 limits, and grow full of spots and wrinkles and blemishes and corrup- 
 tions. The miraculous endowments of all these offices have ceased, 
 because there is no longer any occasion for them, (the external heal- 
 ings, which were like fruit before the harvest, being superseded by the 
 fruits of health and blessedness, which the gospel hath produced, not 
 
1 2 PREFA CE. 
 
 upon individuals, but upon nations and generations ; the internal 
 powers of understanding and discourse being superseded by the thing 
 understood and discoursed of, which we have in the writing's of the 
 apostles.) The miraculous gifts, whether external or internal, have 
 brought themselves to an end ; but the use and purpose of these offices 
 as surely remain as the use and purpose of the evangelical minister 
 and the faithful pastor remain. And if our churches were in full 
 possession of the Spirit of Christ, they would order themselves and 
 their operations after these five divisions of the Christian ministry. 
 Indeed, they are beginning to do so imperceptibly. _ Every Church and 
 body of dissenters have already reconstituted the apostolic office in the 
 missionary ; the office of the preacher or prophet is also beginning to 
 separate from the office of pastor in our great cities, (pity that it were 
 at the expense of the latter,) and the office of evangelist is well sus- 
 tained by what are called the evangelical clergy, (pity that they did not 
 address themselves also to the pastoral and prophetic offices ;) the 
 doctors should be in the universities and schools of learning, as is well 
 set forth in the fifth chapter of the second book of Discipline ; and, 
 for pastors, they are to be found, still in ancient simplicity and faith- 
 fulness, in many parishes of the North. Whether it be possible for 
 one man to discharge these four offices of the Church, I know not; but 
 this I know, that any one of them is a sufficient field for the faculties 
 and energies of the most able and active man. 
 
 Into these matters of ecclesiastical polity it may be thought out of 
 place to have entered here, but it is important to have communicated 
 in this short and simple way the leading idea of this discourse concern- 
 ing doctrine, which is intended to bring back the missionary to the 
 apostolical office, to restore the gospel messenger to his dignity of 
 place, to give him back his charter and prerogative, to deliver him into 
 the liberty of his office out of the hands of whomsoever would enthral 
 it, to make him the servant of our common Lord, the dependent of our 
 common Father, the mouth and voice of our common Spirit, subor- 
 
PREFACE. 13 
 
 dinate to nothing upon the earth save the authority of the Church 
 which ordained him, and the law of the gospel verity. Though 
 published separately, in order to redeem my pledge to the public and 
 gratify the feeling out of which the pledge was given, it contains a full 
 development of the missionary constitution and a demonstration of its 
 perpetuity, and therefore is complete in itself, though only a fragment 
 of the whole discourse ; which 1 shall be the better able to address to 
 the conditions of the present time, when I shall have gathered the 
 judgment of the churches upon the doctrine, through their several 
 public organs of opinion. 
 
 Now, if the members and managers of missionary societies think that 
 I entertain towards them any feelings but those of brotherhood in the 
 work in which they labour, they deceive themselves and disbelieve my 
 declarations. It is amongst the pleasantest recollections of my early 
 years, that in my youth their cause was the subject of my prayers and 
 the end of my secret savings ; that many years before I reached man's 
 estate, 1 was chosen the manager of one of the country Bible societies, 
 and one of the country missionary societies of Scotland ; that I after- 
 wards filled the office of secretary to the two chief societies in the most 
 populous city of Scotland ; in all which offices I had the approbation 
 of the societies entered on their minutes. And it is now a continual 
 subject of regret to me, that the duties of the ministerial and pastoral 
 office, to which I am ordained, leave me no time for serving their most 
 noble cause, otherwise than by the silent and secret meditation of these 
 unworthy thoughts. That I consider their plans imperfect and imma- 
 ture, is, I trust, no more than they do themselves. That I search the 
 Scriptures for light, is, I trust, no more than they do themselves. That 
 I make known to others the knowledge which is revealed unto my 
 mind, is no more than the)' do in every one of their publications. 
 Therefore, let them take me to be as indeed I am, a true friend to the 
 work in which they are engaged ; and let them judge me in the spirit 
 of love, not of bitterness or strife. 
 
i A PREFACE. 
 
 My desire and prayer for every missionary society which is embo- 
 died, for every mission which is undertaken, for every missionary who 
 adventures from the bosom of his home, for the sake of the gospel of 
 Christ and the salvation of the unbelieving nations, is, that they may 
 prosper to the ends of the earth. If I forget them in my prayers, 
 private and public, may my right hand forget her cunning ; if I fail to 
 contribute my mite to their support, may the Lord's providence cease 
 to provide for me and mine. Nay, but more, I will think for their 
 sake, and meditate my inmost thoughts for their success. My mind, 
 as well as my soul, belongeth to Christ, my Creator and Redeemer, 
 and unto His cause they are due and are devoted. And in this spirit 
 I do now pray to Him, to save or destroy, to prosper or blast, these 
 first-fruits of many thoughts, according as they are fitted to advance or 
 to retard the glory of His great name. 
 
 CALEDONIAN CHURCH, 
 January, 1825. 
 
THE MISSIONARY CHARTER; 
 
 OR, 
 
 MESSIAH'S INSTRUCTIONS TO THE FIRST 
 
 MISSIONARIES, BEING THE GROUND-WORK OF THE 
 
 FOLLOWING ADDRESSES. 
 
 MATT. x. 5-42. 
 
 r T A HESE twelve Jesus sent forth, and commanded them, saying, Go, 
 -A- not into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Sama- 
 ritans enter ye not : but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of 
 Israel. And as ye go, preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at 
 hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils : 
 freely ye have received, freely give. Provide nejther gold, nor silver, 
 nor brass in your purses ; nor scrip for yot<r journey, neither two coats, 
 neither shoes, nor yet staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat. 
 And into whatsoever city or town ye shall enter, enquire who in it is 
 worthy ; and there abide till ye go thence. And when ye come into an 
 house, salute it. And if the house be worthy, let your peace come 
 upon it ; but if it be not worthy, let your peace return to you. And 
 whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart 
 out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet. Verily I say 
 unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and 
 Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city. Behold, I send 
 you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves : be ye therefore wise as 
 serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of men ; for they will 
 deliver you up to the councils, and they will scourge you in their 
 
j5 THE MISSIONARY CHARTER. 
 
 synagogues : and ye shall be brought before governors and kings for 
 my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles. But when 
 they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak ; for 
 it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is 
 not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you. 
 And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father 
 the child : and the children shall rise up against their parents, and 
 cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my 
 name's sake : but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But 
 when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another : for verily I 
 say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the 
 Son of man be come. The disciple is not above his master, nor the 
 servant above his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his 
 master, and the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of 
 the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his 
 household ? Fear them not therefore : for there is nothing covered, 
 that shall not be revealed ; and hid, that shall not be known. What I 
 tell you in darkness, that speak ye in light : and what ye hear in the 
 ear, that preach ye upon the housetops. And fear not them which kill 
 the body, but are not able to kill the soul : but rather fear him which 
 is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows 
 sold for a farthing ? and one of them shall not fall on the ground 
 without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all num- 
 bered. Fear ye not therefore ; ye are of more value than many 
 sparrows. Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will 
 I confess also before my Father which is in heaven. But whosoever 
 shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which 
 is in heaven. Think not that I am come to send peace on earth : I 
 came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at 
 variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and 
 the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a man's foes shall 
 be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more 
 
THE MISSIONARY CHARTER. jy 
 
 than me is not worth)" of me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more 
 than me is not worthy of me. And he that tnketh not his cross, and 
 followeth after me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall 
 lose it ; and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. He that 
 receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him 
 that sent me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet 
 shall receive a prophet's reward ; and he that receiveth a righteous 
 man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous man's 
 reward. And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little 
 ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say 
 unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. 
 
MISSIONARIES AFTER THE 
 APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 THE OCCASION AND METHOD OF THE ADDRESSES. 
 
 MEN, BRETHREN, AND FATHERS, It hath never been my lot to 
 be present on occasions like this, so as to gather for myself, 
 and the labours of my ministry have hindered me from going about to 
 learn of others, what is the use and wont, and common expectation 
 connected with the annual discourses, which are preached before the 
 guardians and friends of the missionary cause ; so that I stand up, in- 
 experienced and ignorant, to attempt a work from which able ministers 
 have shrunk back abashed, and to which the ablest within the land 
 have approached with fear and trembling. It is, therefore, no less 
 necessary for the reassurance of my own mind, than it is expedient for 
 the edification of this enlightened and spiritual convocation, (if, indeed, 
 I may hope without presumption to edify such), that I should meditate 
 beforehand the nature of the office w r hich I have undertaken ; what is 
 the measure of my responsibility to Christ the Head of the Church ; 
 and to the venerable society which hath intrusted me with this charge ; 
 and what is the nature of my commission to the multitude now as- 
 sembled to hear what I shall speak. 
 
 The high and seated dignity which this society hath attained in the 
 judgment of the Christian Church, and the weighty and well-earned 
 reputation which it hath obtained, not in Christendom alone, but over 
 the widest bounds of the habitable earth, relieve its advocate from the 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. jg 
 
 dangerous office of eulogy and panegyric, which he may safely leave to 
 the " isles and the inhabitants thereof, to the wilderness and the cities 
 thereof, to the villages which Kedar doth inhabit, and to the tenants 
 of the rock." Its labours also, and the labours of its servants, on every 
 foreign shore, its blessed toil among the barbarous people with the 
 fruits thereof, the sufferings and deaths of its true and trusty messengers, 
 or their return in godly triumph, attended with the spoils of idolatry, 
 and crowned with the olive crown of peace, their gifts of tongues, and 
 their interpretations of tongues, all the pious rehearsal of its story, 
 with the pleasing task of justifying, approving, and applauding its 
 various proceedings, he may likewise decline to touch, as rightfully 
 belonging to another place and to another meeting, expressly set apart 
 for that more secular end. Holy assemblies, like this, which are opened 
 and concluded with praise and prayer, and wherein a minister of the 
 blessed gospel is called to discourse from the word of God, before the 
 patrons, presidents, guardians, office-bearers, and friends of the mission- 
 ary cause, ought to be taken up with higher and more sacred discourse 
 than the praising of men, or the upholding of man's imperfect works. 
 The preacher hath befoVe him the spiritual counsellors of the heathen, 
 the propagators of the faith of Christ ; who, being conscious of their 
 insufficiency for such a trust, and knowing how they are liable to decay, 
 and fail under the difficulties of spiritual work, if not refreshed from 
 the everlasting fountain of life and truth, judge it wise, (and most wise 
 surely it is,) to select from the churches ordained ministers of Christ, 
 who may discourse to them freely and largely upon the cause which 
 the)- have set their hearts and strengthened their hands to carry 
 forward. For such an end they place him in the chair of verity, and 
 put into his hands the oracles of God, and without let or hindrance or 
 instructions of any kind, they say, Brother, as thou has freely received, 
 to us freely bestow of the gift that is given unto thee. 
 
 Now, at any time, it is a high commission for a frail mortal to publish 
 the gospel of Christ, and he should seek for his soul every pious help ; 
 
20 
 
 .1//.V.S7( AY. 1 k IKS A FTEk 
 
 but to counsel the counsellors, to judge the judges, and prophesy to one 
 of the great witnesses of the Church, is an overwhelming duty, whose 
 approach I have long dreaded, as of a mountain-billow which threatened 
 to overwhelm my scarce sea-worthy "bark ; and now that it is at hand I 
 scarce can summon strength to face it, or know how to steer through it 
 safely. God be my help ! I have hardly proved the armour of this 
 warfare, before I am called to give counsel to the leaders of the host, 
 and the assembled camp. The burden is too great, and oppresseth my 
 spirit, and I would ilee, like the prophet Jonah, from declaring the 
 message with which my spirit is oppressed, were there not a heavy woe 
 denounced upon every prophet who shunneth to declare the whole 
 counsel of God. To which call being obedient, the call of a higher 
 authority than the leaders of the host and the assembled camp, even of 
 Him under whose commission the work proceedeth, I take unto myself 
 courage to declare that which I have long apprehended, which, in 
 God's word, I have well considered, and whereof I have endeavoured to 
 be well assured. 
 
 In casting about to discover in what way I might strengthen my 
 spirit to this high occasion, and in what style it became me to address 
 this very grave and reverend assembly, and in seeking counsel of the 
 Lord ; it pleased Him to recall to my mind three instances in the 
 history of the Church, wherein His faithful servants have been called to 
 bear testimony before assemblies clothed with still higher dignity and 
 importance than this before which I now address myself to speak. The 
 first, that gravest assembly which Christendom hath ever seen, wherein 
 the apostles and elders, \\ith the Holy Ghost, met in Jerusalem, to 
 consider how far the Gentiles were to be bound by the ordinances of 
 Moses. Applying myself humbly to learn, from the manner of this 
 assembly, whereof we have a particular account in Acts xv. , I perceived 
 that Peter and James, apostles though they were, and inspired of the 
 Holy Ghost, framed their discourse with a diligent reference to Scrip- 
 ture and to their own experience; that Taul and Barnabas for their 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 21 
 
 argument gave a simple narrative of what God had wrought among the 
 Ci entiles by their hand ; and that every speaker abstained from words of 
 policy, address, and worldly wisdom ; insomuch, that there is found in 
 the whole proceedings of that assembly, neither obsequiousness, nor 
 eulogy, nor idle words of apology, nor general commendations of the 
 work ; but throughout, a devout spirit, deliberative wisdom, plain- 
 spoken discourse, and a steady application to the matter in hand. 
 
 The second instance which came opportunely to my mind while 
 deliberating of this exigency in which I am placed, was from the times 
 of the Reformation of England, when the godly Edward, and the 
 protector, with the chief statesmen and office-bearers to the realm, were 
 wont to hear the master spirits of the Protestant faith discourse before 
 them. On which high occasions these men, who, next to the apostles, 
 were the best missionaries that Christendom hath seen, valiant men and 
 true, who sealed their testimony with their blood, thought it beside 
 their holy office to eulogise the most gracious youth that ever filled a 
 throne, since the days of good Joshua ; and they held it beneath their 
 office to smooth down the stern and rugged voice of truth to the ear of 
 the piinces and politicians who sat in state before them : but like 
 prophets arisen from the dead, (and what are Christian preachers but 
 the prophets of the New Dispensation,) they fulfilled their office by 
 thundering into the ears of king and peers, of courtiers and men of war, 
 the religious necessities of the realm, and the religious duties of the 
 rulers of the realm ; for, as you may still see by the writings of Ridley 
 and Latimer, and Gilpin, there were in the discourses which they held, 
 I1O panegyrics of the work of reformation yet imperfectly done, no idle 
 commendations of the labourers in the work, but rebukes of hungry 
 courtiers, and hollow-hearted friends of the cause, pictures of an 
 ignorant and famished people, enumerations of the religious wants and 
 abuses of the realm, plans of spiritual and charitable undertakings, with 
 a restless urgency towards the high mark of a people's thorough 
 reformation. And sermons such as these were fruitful things, as the 
 
22 
 
 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 noble foundation of Christ's Hospital doth testify, which was the off- 
 spring of one of these fearless pleadings for the sake of truth. 
 
 The last instance, by the authority of which I embolden 
 myself to the undertaking of this discourse, is derived from 
 a quarter to which I, at least, and I trust all judicious and 
 charitable Christians along with me, look with like satisfaction as to 
 the other two, the Church from whose members one of the least 
 worthy hath been chosen this night to hold forth to you the word of 
 truth. The national assembly of the Kirk of Scotland, which is r. y 
 far the most venerable relict of ecclesiastical dignity, a sort of house of 
 commons to the Church of Christ, and which ere this time would have 
 wrought out for the religious rights of man whatever the House of 
 Commons hath for his civil rights, had not the strong and villain hand 
 of power brought in patronage against the claim of rights and the 
 solemnest faith of treaties, that assembly (whose pious labour, now 
 about to commence, may the Lord bless !) cloth never sit down to 
 deliberate upon the grave matters committed to its trust without first 
 appointing one of the brethren to discourse before it from the word of 
 God. Upon which occasion the preachers, of whom I have heard many, 
 do never, even in these degenerate days of pulpit liberty, condescend 
 to flattery of the learned, reverend, and noble personages before them, 
 nor to empty eulogies of the Church ; but, as beseem eth the minister 
 of truth and the chair of verity, they maintain a grave and serious 
 discourse upon the high matters for which the ecclesiastical estate of 
 the nation is assembled, and give forth with authority the doctrine, 
 reproof, correction, and instruction in righteousness, for which all 
 Scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and for the promulgation 
 of which this office of the ministry is maintained on the earth. 
 
 Which three instances of the Apostolic age, of the Reformation of 
 England, and of the General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland, 
 coming seasonably to my recollection, while J was in doubt and 
 much dismay, concerning that which 1 hud undertaken, I resolved 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 23 
 
 to establish my feet upon them as upon a sacred tripod ; and to 
 crave of the Lord, as indeed,! have done, to breathe upon me of the 
 spirit of the great fathers in His Church, that I might be enabled to 
 speak at this time in that bold and fearless style in which they, stand- 
 ing in my room, would have dared to speak. For I said unto myself, 
 Though all the missionary societies of this land were assembled within 
 these walls, they would not form so grave an assembly as that which 
 met in Jerusalem in the primitive times ; neither hath the work on 
 which they are entered yet grown to be so great a work as the Refor- 
 mation of England, whereof the missionary work is but one of the 
 children ; and this assembly however reverend, is not yet so venerable 
 as the great deliberative assembly of our national Church, which for 
 three centuries hath maintained the fear and discipline of God within 
 a realm, and once or twice, nay thrice, saved the realm from the armed 
 paw of violence and misrule. Therefore, 1 said further unto myself, I 
 will not shrink back abashed from the full and fearless declaration of 
 what seemeth to me right ; I will not sink my office into that of a 
 money-gatherer, or a tale-bearer, of an advocate of institutions, however 
 good, or a worshipper of mortal men, however excellent ; but I w r ill be 
 a teacher of the gospel, and a publisher of the praise of Christ, and will 
 not shun to deliver the whole counsel of God, upon this all-important 
 matter of the missionary work : and I will speak it with the more 
 plainness, because the heads and leaders thereof are now before me, 
 that haply the Lord may carry the principles, which I am about to 
 deduce from His holy word, into the court and citadel of this great 
 and glorious cause, to which our countrymen, ever forward and ever 
 .foremost in a good work, have set their shoulder, resolved to maintain 
 it unto the death. 
 
 But when I took to myself this high commission of counselling the 
 counsellors, and judging the judges of this great undertaking, I 
 besought the Lord that He would cast out all thoughts and conclusions 
 which had their origin in myself, all fears and apprehensions which 
 
2 A MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 came in from other quarters, and that He would make of my organs of 
 thought, feeling, and speech, an instrument wherewith to declare the 
 mind and will of His Holy Spirit of truth. And, that I might not be 
 wanting in my duty of searching His revelation, I examined every- 
 where for a basis, and as it were a constitutional charter of missionary 
 associations, and a rule for them to proceed by in all their transactions. 
 And having found, as it seemed to me, for reasons which I shall shew 
 hereafter, such an abiding constitution, four times repeated in the 
 Gospels, and given at large in the tenth chapter of Matthew, which I 
 have read as the ground of this discourse ; I gave thanks, and said : Xow 
 my way is clear before me ; I will be an expositor of these instructions 
 of my Redeemer ; here is the matter of my discourse ; here are the 
 everlasting instructions of the missionary ; this let me endeavour to 
 comprehend, and set forth unto the people. And being, as it seemed 
 to me, directed of God, both in the matter and manner of this dis- 
 course, 1 gave thanks, and took courage, and being delivered from my 
 fears, I now proceed upon my course rejoicing, and hope to steer safely 
 through that mountain-billow, whose rough top came threatening to 
 overwhelm my scarce sea- worth)- bark. 
 
 Having entered with caution, I resolved next to proceed with order 
 in handling this great question of the missionary work ; and it seemed 
 to me best to set forth my thoughts after the following method : 
 
 First, To give an exposition of the missionary estate, as it is laid 
 down in the fore-mentioned chapter of instructions given by Messiah 
 to the first apostles of His kingdom. 
 
 Secondly, To examine if it was meant to be of continual authority in 
 the Christian Church, as the constitution of Christian missions. 
 
 Thirdly, To examine how much of the success of the apostolic age 
 depended upon their exact adherence to the spirit and letter of this 
 constitution. 
 
 Fourthly, To shew, from the history of Christian missions subsequent 
 to the primitive times, that they have been prosperous in proportion as 
 
HIE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 2 Z 
 
 the)' conformed to, and unsuccessful in proportion as they departed 
 from, the spirit and letter uf Messiah's constitution for the missionary 
 estate. 
 
 Fifthly, To study it in practice, and consider what good fruits at 
 home, whence the missionaries go, and abroad whither they proceed, 
 would come from the exact fulfilment of it. 
 
 Sixthly, To explain the office of a missionary society in carrying it 
 into effect. 
 
 Lastly, To shew the duty of private Christians to support all such 
 institutions, as endeavour to conform themselves to the appointment of 
 the Lord, and to keep on the great work of converting the nations. 
 
 So that our whole discourse will he an argument founded upon our 
 Lord's words, and concluding for the support of this cause for which we are 
 assembled, and throughout instructing those who are engaged therein. 
 Now, I ask you to hear me at length upon this, the most important 
 question of the present times; and not to restrict me to the bounds 
 which are observed in ordinary discourses, but, as they do in the courts 
 of justice and the national assemblies, to give me a latitude commen- 
 surate with the weight and importance of the question, which, not of my 
 own will, but by request of this great society, I come forward to 
 advocate. 
 
 According to this plan, the first thing to be considered is the office of 
 the missionary, as it is laid down in these words of Messiah, who him- 
 self was Heaven's high Missionary to the earth, and fulfilled to the 
 letter every one of the instructions which He gave unto those who 
 should travel in His foot-steps. 
 
I. 
 
 MESSIAH'S CONSTITUTION FOR THE MISSIONARY 
 ESTATE. 
 
 WHEN kings send out ambassadors to represent their person and 
 their interests in foreign courts, they choose out from amongst 
 the people, men of high name and reputation, well skilled in the ways 
 of the world and the policy of states ; whom, having clothed with 
 powers plenipotentiary, and appointed with officers and servants of 
 every kind, they send forth, accredited with royal letters to all courts 
 and kingdoms, whither they may come, furnished with grace and splen- 
 dour to feast the common eye, and laden with rich gifts to take the 
 cupidity or conciliate the favour of those with whom they have to do. 
 Also, when a nation fitteth out a journey or voyage of discovery, they 
 choose out men of fortitude, humanity, and skill, upon whom to bestow 
 a valorous and steady crew, who will not be daunted by the dangers, 
 nor baffled by the difficulties of the work ; and having called in the 
 \\hole science and art of the country, to fortify and accommodate the 
 danger-hunting men, they launch them forth amidst the hearty cheers 
 and benedictions of their country. And when a nation arrayeth its 
 strength to battle for its ancient rights and dominions; or when a noble 
 nation armeth in the cause of humanity to help an insulted sister in the 
 day of her need, as \ve Britons have oft been called upon to do, the 
 nation is shaken to her very centre with commotion, and every arm 
 and sinew of the land straineth to the work. Fleets and armies, and 
 munitions of war; the whole chivalry, the whole prowess, strength and 
 policy, and oft the \\hole wealth of the land muster in the cause; and 
 the chief captains forsake their wives and children, and peaceful homes; 
 and the warlike harness is taken from the hall where it hung in peace ; 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 2^ 
 
 and the bold peasantry come trooping from their altars and their house- 
 hold hearths; and "the trumpet speaketh to the armed throng :" they 
 gather into one, and descend unto the shores of the surrounding sea, 
 whither every fleet ship and gallant sailor have made ready to bear them 
 to the place where the rights of the nation, or the insulted rights of 
 humanity cry upon their righteous arm for redress ; and their kinsmen 
 follow them with their prayers, and their wives and children, their 
 fathers, and the households of their fathers, with the assembled congre- 
 gations of the people, commit them and their righteous cause to the 
 safe conduct and keeping of the Lord of Hosts. 
 
 But when the King of heaven sendeth forth these twelve ambassadors 
 to the nations, fitteth out these discoverers of the people that sat in dark- 
 ness and the shadow of death, and furnisheth forth this little army to 
 subvert the thrones, dominions, principalities and powers of darkness 
 which brooded over the degenerate earth, to bring forth the lost con- 
 dition of humanity, and establish its crown of glory as at the first ; he 
 took men of no name nor reputation, endowed with no Greek, with no 
 Roman fame, by science untaught, by philosophy unschooled, fishermen 
 from the shores of an inland sea ; the class of men, which of all classes 
 is distinguished for no exploit in the story of the world ; Galileans, a 
 people despised of the Jews, who were themselves a despised people. 
 As at first, when God wished to make a man in His own image, after 
 His own likeness, He brought not the materials from heavenly regions, 
 neither created a finer quintessence of matter for the high occasion, 
 but took from the ground a handful of dust, thereon to impress the 
 divine image, and thereinto to breathe the spirit of lives : so the Son of 
 God, himself a servant, despised and rejected of men, when He chose 
 vessels to bear His name before Gentiles and kings, and the children 
 of Israel, preferred that they should be empty of human greatness, 
 without any grace or comeliness in the sight of man, without any odour 
 of a good name, or rich contents of learning or knowledge ; that the 
 treasure being in earthen vessels, the praise might be of God. 
 
2 8 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 Such men having chosen, for subverting the ancient thrones of dark- 
 ness, and recovering the world from the perdition of sin and the night 
 of the grave, He sent them forth, destitute of all visible sustenance, and 
 of all human help, and forbade them to be beholden unto any. "Take 
 nothing for your journey; neither staves nor scrip, neither bread, neither 
 money, neither have two coats a-piece : provide neither gold nor silver, 
 nor brass, in your purses, nor scrip for your journey, neither have two 
 coats, neither shoes, nor yet staves, and salute no man by the way." 
 No means of any sort did He permit for procuring the necessaries of 
 life, or purchasing the helps of their journey; no store of provisions, 
 nor even a scrip for containing what might be offered them by the pity 
 or piety of the people; no raiment nor vesture, with the change of 
 which to comfort their weary and way-worn limbs, besides what was 
 sufficient for nature's modesty and her present necessity. Without 
 staff, without shoes, they fared on their way two by two; their sandalled 
 feet exposed to dust and sultry heat; their bodies to every blast of 
 heaven ; their natural wants to man's precarious charity. The most 
 defenceless bird that flies athwart the heavens, the weakest, most 
 persecuted beast that cowers beneath the covert, or scuds along the 
 plain, are better provided with visible help than were these apostles of 
 the Highest ; for the birds of the air have nests to which to wing their 
 flight at eventide, and the beasts of the earth have holes wherein to 
 screen themselves from pursuit ; but the founders of the spiritual and 
 everlasting kingdom had not where to lay their head. 
 
 Whom having thus divided from the resources which human weak- 
 ness hath in the storehouse and armoury of nature, he next divided 
 from the resources which she hath in the power and patronage and 
 friendship of men. They are to compose no speeches for the ears 
 of prince or governor, but to speak as the Spirit of Truth gave them 
 utterance ; they are not to go from house to house making friends against 
 the evil day, but to abide where they first halted, so long as they are 
 welcome; they are not even to salute a friend, acquaintance, or neigh- 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 39 
 
 bour by the way. And if, in spite of these preventions, it should come 
 to pass that the people they conferred with, well disposed to them for 
 their word's sake, should take pity upon their unprovided estate, and 
 offer them money to help them on their way ; lo, they have no purse for 
 containing it ! if they should offer them provision to be their viaticum 
 from town to town ; lo, they have no scrip wherein to bestow it ! They 
 cannot possess, they cannot accumulate, they are cut off and separate 
 from all fixed and movable wealth which the world holdeth within its 
 fair and ample bound. What will preserve life, they are to take upon 
 the credit of their universal message, without feeling obligation, for the 
 labourer is worthy of his meat, and they are wholly obliged to another 
 cause. In no earthly shape can they benefit from their labours under 
 the sun ; to no account can they turn the children of men, from whose 
 liberality they can profit no further than to live. Like Jonah, com- 
 missioned with the burden of Nineveh, they are to gird up their loins 
 and make speed ; they are to hie from house to house, and hasten from 
 town to town, inquiring after the spirits of immortal men ; to tell their 
 tale, and hurry onward : as the heralds of the northern chiefs were wont 
 to hasten from house to house, and from village to village, when rousing 
 the mountain-clans to war. And cause truly see I none, why they who 
 hold the commission to make peace should not be as fleet as those who 
 hold the commission to levy war, and the messenger of salvation fly 
 with as hasty a wing as the messenger of death ; why servants should 
 not be found to do as much, and to do it as hastily, for the King of 
 heaven, as for the lordly chieftain of a mountain-clan, or the throned 
 monarch of a mighty land. 
 
 Thus disfurnished of resources from nature's storehouse, and hindered 
 from ploughing with human help, do you ask if these first missionaries 
 of the gospel had promises of welcome everywhere, and went forth 
 on a flourishing and popular cause? if the way was prepared for them 
 in every city? and a hospitable home made ready for them in every 
 house? Hear what their Lord saith to them at parting: "Go your 
 
3o MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 ways, behold I send you as sheep in the midst of wolves. Beware 
 of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will 
 scourge you in their synagogues, and ye shall be brought before gov- 
 ernors and kings for my sake, and the brother shall deliver up the 
 brother, and the father the child, and the children shall rise up against 
 the parents and cause them to be put to death, and ye shall be hated of 
 all men for my name's sake." Such was their heavy parting. No 
 missionary that ever went to the heathen, fared forth on his way with so 
 gloomy a foreboding, so cheerless a farewell. Let no one object, in 
 the face of these predictions too truly fulfilled: "But these are not 
 men like us, open to every want ; they are inspired miracle-working 
 men who had nature under their control." Their miracles, which 
 saved many, protected not themselves; their inspirations, which blessed 
 many, could not bless themselves from every harm and sorrow which 
 patient nature can endure. They are to be placed at the bar of civil 
 law, to be hunted out with religious persecution; against them the 
 tender affections of life are to rise in arms, and the soft and downy 
 scenes of home are to bristle like the iron front of war ; the tender hands 
 which are wont to pluck the thorns of sorrow from our feet, are to guide 
 the weapons of their death ; of all men they are to be hated for His 
 name's sake ; they are to be hunted like the partridge on the mountains, 
 and every refuge upon the earth is to be hidden from their sight. Go, 
 said He, my chosen ones, go like the defenceless lamb into the paw of 
 the ravenous wolf : the world thirsteth for your blood, and is in arms 
 against your undefended lives. Nevertheless, go. You are without 
 weapons of defence, no bribes are in your hands, nor soft words upon 
 your tongues ; and you go in the teeth of hatred, derision, and rage. 
 Nevertheless, my children, go. 
 
 They are launched into a stormy sea, a sea of storms and shipwreck 
 is before them, and their frail bark is not fenced or fitted out for any 
 storm, or furnished for any voyage. So the world would say, because 
 so it seemeth in the eye of the world, which looketh but upon the 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 3! 
 
 visible and temporal forms of things. It is madness, they would say, 
 moon-struck madness, to think that of such should come any speed : it 
 is not in the nature of things they should exist a week in any region of 
 the earth, and in barbarous regions not a single day: no policy of 
 insurance would do their risk at any premium : they are shipwrecked, 
 cast-away creatures, doomed to death, and destined to effect no good, 
 even if they should outlive their first outsetting Men must have a 
 livelihood before they can speak or act : they must have protection to 
 cover them from the tyranny of power, and law to save them from the 
 riots of the people : they must be well paid, if you would have them 
 work well ; for if a man have no comforts his life is miserable. What ! 
 such mendicants as these convert the world ! say the well-conditioned 
 classes ; vagrant, vagabond fellows, they are fitter for the stocks or the 
 common jail. Such illiterate clowns, such babblers as these, instruct 
 mankind ! say the learned classes ; away with them ' to their nets and 
 fishing-craft. And, say the political classes, it is dangerous to the 
 state ; they cover plots under their silly pretences, and must be dealt 
 with by the strong hand of power. Methinks I hear, in every con- 
 temptible and arrogant speech which is vented against the modern 
 missionaries by worldly and self-sufficient men, the echo, after two 
 thousand years, of those speeches which were wont to be poured upon 
 the twelve apostles and seventy disciples, when they began to emerge 
 out of the foundation of society, into the neighbourhood and level of 
 its higher ranks. 
 
 But the Wonderful Counsellor, in whom dwelt all the treasures of 
 wisdom and of knowledge, and who knew what was in man, did not 
 without good and sufficient cause divorce the human desires from those 
 objects on which they naturally rest. He knew that if He gave the 
 messengers of His kingdom, which is not of this world, and against 
 which this world conspireth, to expect any ray of hope, any shadow of 
 consolation, or scantling of support from the things of this world, it 
 would be only to disappoint them in the end : for though He foresaw 
 
A MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 that fair weather would dawn, and much enjoyment be partaken in the 
 progress and towards the latter end of the work, He saw, hanging over 
 its first beginnings in every region of the earth, storms and tempests, 
 and terrific commotions, out of which the eclipsed light of truth was to 
 come forth, and the day of peace to be established ; He knew that in 
 every realm His truth was to make way against the edge of the sword, 
 and, like the phoenix, to procreate itself in the flame of fire, and that 
 His servants were to be heard from the paw of the lion and from the 
 horn of the unicorn : wherefore it booted not to amuse those who were 
 to plant the plant, and those who were to propagate the plant, with the 
 enjoyments which were to be partaken under its future shade ; and He 
 spoke plainly unto them, and said, If ye have not a heart for the 
 extremes of human suffering, and a soul above the fear of man, ye need 
 not undertake this work, more perilous than war, more adventurous 
 than a voyage to " regions of thick-ribbed ice," and more important to 
 the earth than the most sacred legation which ever went forth in behalf 
 of suffering and insulted humanity. 
 
 But, while He cut them off from the power and virtue of gold and 
 silver, which, they say, will unlock barred gates, and scale frowning 
 ramparts; while He denied them the scrip, and therewith hindered 
 the accumulation or use of property in any form ; while He forbade 
 them change of raiment, that is, pleasure and accommodation of the 
 person; and with their staff interdicted all ease of travel and recreation 
 of the sense by the way; and in hindering salutations hindered the 
 formalities of life and the ends of natural or social affection ; all these 
 the natural motives to enterprise, and the sweet rewards of success, 
 while He cut asunder, as hath been said, He foresaw that whether He 
 did so or not, the world would soon do it for them : He did not leave 
 their minds in a void state, without motive or inducement, or hope of 
 reward ; but proceeded to fill each several chamber thereof with the 
 spirit of a more enduring patience and a more adventurous daring ; to 
 give to faith what He took from sight ; what He interdicted in the 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. ~~ 
 
 visible to supply from the invisible ; what of temporal things He spoiled 
 them of to repay with things spiritual and eternal. 
 
 And instead of a home He gave them this declaration, which raised 
 them first to a footing with Himself, and then to a footing with God : 
 "He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me 
 receiveth him that sent me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name 
 of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward ; and he that receiveth a 
 righteous man in the name of a righteous man, shall receive a righteous 
 man's reward." Instead of food, He gave them this promise, "Who- 
 ever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold 
 water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you he shall in 
 no wise lose his reward." Instead of protection and a safe-conduct on 
 the way, He gave them this stout-hearted admonition, " Fear not them 
 which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul : but rather fear 
 him which is able to kill both soul and body in hell. Are not two 
 sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall to the 
 ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all 
 numbered. Fear ye not, therefore ; ye are of more value than many 
 sparrows." And when delivered up to councils, and brought before 
 governors and kings, instead of human help and countenance, and skill 
 of pleading and persuasive words, he gave them this sentence: "When 
 they deliver you up, take no thought how or what ye shall speak, for 
 it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not 
 ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you.' 
 And when their fathers and mothers should betray them, and their 
 sons and daughters should spit upon them, which the first confessors 
 sadly proved, He gave them this consolation to their heavy hearts, 
 "He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me, 
 and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of 
 me." For their sustenance under false accusation, He gave them this 
 comfort, " The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above 
 his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master, and 
 
~* MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 the servant as his lord. If they have called the master of the house 
 Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household." 
 For the comfort of their hearts under blackening calumnies, when their 
 sun of life was setting under thick and dark clouds of falsehood, and 
 their name was like to be overshadowed for ever, He gave them this 
 assurance, "There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and 
 hid that shall not be known. What I tell you in darkness, that speak 
 ye in light : what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye on the house- 
 tops." And for their use, when they were enveloped in the flames, or 
 extended upon the honourable cross, He gave them this heart-establish- 
 ing word, " He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not 
 worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it : and he that 
 loseth his life for my sake shall find it." And to keep up a constant 
 cheerfulness in their hearts under every hardship and mistreatment, 
 He gave them to know and to rejoice, that their names were written in 
 heaven ; removing their confidence from everything terrestrial, that it 
 .might rest at the right hand of God, where there is fulness of joy and 
 pleasures for evermore. 
 
 Thus furnished He his missionaries, building them up in faith, and 
 establishing them with infallible promise, weaning them from the 
 bosom of the earth, to place them in the bosom of their Father in 
 heaven. He took them from the hands of human protection, to put 
 them under the arm of the mighty God of Jacob. He emptied them 
 of self-dependence and dependence upon human strength and prudence, 
 to fill them with the spirit of wisdom and truth. He bestowed upon 
 them the elements of heaven's heroism when he took from them the 
 elements of earth's heroism ; and he conveyed their treasurers away 
 from hence, where moths corrupt and thieves break through to steal, 
 depositing them safely in the heavens ; where also He prepared for 
 them a place in his Father's house of many mansions, and wrote their 
 honoured names in the book of life. 
 
Tim APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 35 
 
 It was a spiritual work they had to do, therefore He disembodied 
 (if I may so speak) and spiritualised the men who were to do it. It 
 was faith they had to plant, therefore He made His missionaries men 
 of faith, that they might plant faith, and faith alone ; they had to 
 deliver the nations from the idolatry of the gold and the silver, there- 
 fore He took care His messengers should have none ; they had to 
 deliver them from the idolatry of wisdom, therefore He took care they 
 should be foolish ; they had to deliver the world from the idolatry of 
 power and might, therefore He took care they should be weak ; they 
 had to deliver the world from the idolatry of fame and reputation, 
 therefore He took care they should be despised ; they had to deliver 
 the world from the idolatry of things that are, therefore He took care 
 they should be as things that are not : making them in all respects 
 types and representatives of the ritual they were to establish, models 
 of the doctrine which they went forth to teach. 
 
 Such were the men, and such the spiritual equipment of the men, 
 who were sent forth by Messiah, the Missionary of heaven, into all the 
 world, to teach all nations in His discipline, baptize them into His 
 faith, and lay the foundations of that spiritual kingdom which is to 
 cast clown every other kingdom, and endure for ever. And the instruc- 
 tions which He gave them, how to proceed in the effecting of this 
 great revolution, were after the same unearthly and spiritual strain ; 
 such as the wisdom of this world setteth utterly at naught, yet wherein 
 are contained the everlasting principles, by which alone the spiritual 
 sovereignty over the souls of men is to be established. And when we 
 come, in the progress of this discourse, to argue upon these premises 
 whereof we are now making the statement, we hope to manifest unto 
 the spiritual man, and somewhat to discover unto the natural man, 
 that this and this only is the strength in which the Cross is to conquer 
 and subdue the glory and the strength of the nations. 
 
 These instructions were in the following words : " Into whatsoever 
 city or town ye enter, inquire who in it is worthy : and there abide 
 
^g 3/755/OAM^/^5 AFTER 
 
 till ye go thence. And when ye come into an house, salute it. And 
 if the house be worth}', let your peace come upon it : but if it be not 
 worthy, let your peace return to you." They were not, like poor 
 mendicants, to go from door to door, and from town to town, craving 
 a morsel of bread and a cup of water ; but like the royal ambassadors 
 of heaven to the place, they were to inquire who was most worthy to 
 be honoured with their presence, and blessed with the good tidings 
 which they bore from the Majesty of heaven. God thus established 
 the everlasting connexion between natural w r orth and dispensations of 
 grace, by bestowing His blessings upon the most deserving ; and ful- 
 filled the cardinal principle not only of divine but of human govern- 
 ment, the rule of all natural and supernatural dispensations, (for at 
 bottom these are one,) "that unto him who hath shall be given, 
 and he shall have more abundantly, and from him who hath 
 not shall be taken that he hath." Inquire, said he, the most 
 worthy. There was to be no stealthy progress, or keeping in the 
 shade, but open dealing with the most open-hearted and even- 
 minded of the people. There was to be no preference of ranks shewn 
 by these men of no rank, who counted kindred with Messiah, the 
 Missionary of heaven, and were God's adopted children and honoured 
 ambassadors to the earth. They were not, like the Jesuits, to lay their 
 artful toils around the high and noble and princely of the nations ; nor 
 like the Mendicant Friars, to go about preaching a crusade of poverty 
 or meanness ; nor were they to take their distinction by the grade of 
 intellect or of taste, which compose, even at the best, but a fractionary 
 part of human nature, and may exist in strength surrounded with the 
 most d\varfish and pestilent forms of the moral, social, and spiritual 
 man : but like messengers and missionaries from heaven, they were to 
 take their distinction by the grade of worth, or practical goodness ; to 
 inquire, whom the judgment of their fellow-citizens had pronounced 
 worthy, judicious, well-disposed men ; those who, like Cornelius, were 
 devout towards God, and full of alms towards the poor ; or who, like 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 3 7 
 
 Dorcas, employed their leisure and their labour to promote good and 
 charitable works : to whose house coming with a conscience full of 
 heavenly purposes, and lips overflowing with blessing, and hands rich 
 in heaven-derived powers, they were to salute the worthy household 
 with a salutation of peace. 
 
 "And if the Son of Peace be there, your peace will abide upon it." 
 Before their steps proceeded an invisible minister called the Son of 
 Peace, who settled in these worthy habitations, and made the souls of 
 the inmates ready for these apostles of the kingdom of Peace. This 
 Son of Peace is none other than the Prince of Peace, who sealed His 
 instructions to His missionaries, and concluded His incarnate ministry 
 with these words " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of 
 the world :" the same who appeared to Cornelius in a dream, when He 
 directed him to Peter, and who advertised Peter of the approach 
 of the messengers, after He had prepared him for their coming: who 
 directed Philip to the eunuch while he crossed the desert, and caught 
 him away when his work was done: who appeared to Paul as he 
 journeyed to Damascus, and afterwards in the likeness of a Macedonian, 
 invited his blessed steps to our quarter of the globe, saying, " Come 
 over and help us." And, to this day, wherever the true and faithful 
 missionary proceedeth in the faith of Christ, the same Son of Peace 
 goeth before his footsteps, and standeth him instead of sealed letters, 
 fore-runner and guide, instead of safe-conduct and welcome, and every- 
 thing else with which the prudence of men would furnish his perilous 
 way ; without dependence upon which Child of Peace, the missionary 
 is a vagrant and a vagabond upon the earth ; being dependent upon 
 whom, he is the most gracious legate of heaven, never to return to 
 heaven without accomplishing the high and holy intention for which he 
 is commissioned of heaven to go forth unto the nations. 
 
 Being welcomed upon the strength of their salutation of peace, and 
 through the predisposition of this Son of Peace, with whom God 
 blesseth the heart* und the habitations of worthy men, the mission- 
 
3 g MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 aries sat them down and were content with any fare, and with any 
 accommodation. A little bread they needed to feed their natural 
 hunger, a little water to cool their natural thirst, a little space to stretch 
 their weary limbs ; and in return, they had deep, rich, and various dis- 
 course upon the moral condition of mankind, copious and faithful 
 revelations of the grace of God, glad tidings of great joy to the sons of 
 men : and in earnest of that salvation, wherewith they were intrusted, 
 they would heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, cast out devils, and raise 
 the dead. Every good thing which can be wrought without the minis- 
 try of visible and temporal powers ; every good thing which holdeth 
 of the invisible, that is, every consolation, instruction, counsel, and 
 revelation, which man's condition needeth, they held, by free gift of 
 God for free bequest to man ; and all that they needed or besought in 
 return, was a morsel of bread to preserve their lives ; a little oil to feed 
 the lamp which was giving light to all that were in the house. And 
 they made no haste to be gone, neither did they crave libert}' to re- 
 main ; they stayed while they were welcome, or till their work was 
 done ; and whosoever came to the house from the neighbourhood, or 
 village, or town, was free to sit and listen to the good tidings of the 
 kingdom, without having even this pittance of bread and water to give 
 in return. (But what is this, I say? I will not libel mankind so far as 
 to suppose they would grudge so penurious a return for so rich a gift.) 
 There they sat day by day in the house of the worthiest men, holding 
 forth the gospel of peace unto the people, and by all spiritual per- 
 suasion seeking to persuade the people to accept the overtures of its 
 salvation. 
 
 The men being so harmless, their destination so peaceful, and the 
 spirit of their instructions so heavenly, it is difficult to imagine how it 
 were possible they should meet with anything but welcome wherever 
 they came. And it is one of the sorest libels upon the spirit of the 
 world, that almost all of them came to an untimely and violent end. 
 Well said the just and devout Simeon, who stayed on earth to welcome 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. />A 
 
 the great Son and Heir to the house of his Father, and wished to stay 
 no longer, that the infant in his arms was set for a sign to be spoken 
 against, that the secrets of many hearts might be revealed ; and by 
 Christ himself in these instructions, whereof we now present the sub- 
 stance, it is with still more clearness predicted that He came to send 
 not peace upon the earth, but a sword. How true, alas! was shewn 
 the first year, yea, perhaps the first month of His life, by the cruelest 
 sword that ever drunk innocent blood, for which Rachel wept in Rama 
 with great lamentation. Therefore it was necessary to prepare these 
 missionaries for the shadowy side of that experience whereof He had 
 forewarned, whereto He had foredoomed them. They were spiritual 
 vessels ; bound for every port w r here immortal souls did tarry ; and 
 they had spiritual blessings to give in return for a welcome ; but they 
 had also spiritual terrors and cleaving curses, thunders of heaven 
 against every city which gave them no harbour. The ambassadors of 
 heaven held both the blessings and the curses of that court which they 
 represented ; otherwise they would have been only half accomplished 
 for the work : and thus their instructions ran in regard to all who 
 mistreated them and held their commission cheap. 
 
 " Whosoever shall not receive you nor hear your words, when ye 
 depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet, go 
 your ways into the streets of the same, and say, Even the very dust of 
 your city which cleaveth on us, we do wipe off against you ; notwith- 
 standing be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh 
 unto you. But I say unto you, that it shall be more tolerable in that 
 day for Sodom than for that city." 
 
 The city, into any house of which the messengers that came forth 
 from heaven with heaven's credentials were not received, having in it 
 not even one worthy man to arrest the merciful hand of heaven, was 
 well-nigh unto destruction ; and the commission of heaven's servants 
 was to read out its doom, and give it over to its hasty end. For they 
 were not only messengers of the gospel of peace, but ministers of the 
 
^o MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 wrath and justice of God, men clothed in sanctity, and in the august 
 robes of righteousness, to offend whom was to offend the Lord which 
 sent them. And therefore they held the terrors of justice no less than 
 the overtures of mercy. But because this extreme commission of 
 cursing the hard-hearted places is given unto them, we are not to 
 understand that they were to proceed to extremes at once, and to deal 
 only in blessings or curses. These are but the extremes on both sides, 
 between which their spirits were to move according to the circum- 
 stances in which they found themselves. If the people argue, the 
 missionaries argue again ; and being assaulted with scoffs and cunning, 
 they defend themselves with meekness and long-suffering, and from 
 the wisdom of the world they protect themselves with the wisdom 
 which is from above. For besides the harmlessness of the dove, they 
 had given to them the wisdom of the serpent, with which to expose 
 sophistry, to outwit cunning, to defeat artifice, and meet every emer- 
 gency. None of the ordinary powers of the human mind was taken 
 from them when they were deprived of the ordinary accommodations 
 of the world, whereof they w r ere deprived only to disengage them 
 from carefulness and trouble into the protection of their heavenly 
 Father. They were delivered out of the conditions of the sense into 
 the conditions of the mind, that the mind might act with the more 
 alertness and force. The pln.y of their spirit was not fettered in the way 
 in which, in these times, they would fetter the ministers of the gospel. 
 They had the righteous indignation of the ancient prophet, added to 
 the humility and graciousness of the Christian pastor. They were 
 armed men, men armed with the wrath of God. And I cannot and do 
 not doubt, that when they put a city to the ban of God's tribunal, there 
 came upon it, if it repented not, judgments of a signal kind, according 
 to the letter of our Lord's threatening quoted above ; and I believe in 
 my heart that even to this day, were messengers to go forth into all 
 cities arrayed after the fashion of these instructions, they would act like 
 the test of heaven amongst them, and according to their welcome or 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 4 1 
 
 their rejection, it would be seen that blessings of peace and prosperity, 
 or commotions, revolutions, sieges, wars, and discords would befal 
 those places; not indeed miraculously, but in the natural course of things, 
 yet not the less at the command and by the will of God. For in a city 
 which shall scornfully reject or cruelly maltreat such innocent, harmless, 
 and heaven-gifted men, the elements of evil are in strong agitation, 
 and the explosion cannot long be stayed. It is come to a crisis with 
 them, as with Herod, when he ordered the cruelest sword which was 
 ever unsheathed to drink the blood of Rachel's children ; or with the 
 other Herod, when he imprisoned the brethren, and slew James with 
 the sword. Such acts shew that men are lost to all hope of repentance, 
 and cities to all hope of recovery, ripe for hell, and unfit any longer to 
 live upon the earth. 
 
 Thus went forth the first messengers of the kingdom, commissioned 
 to the most pure and benevolent and worthy part of the people and 
 they approached them upon the side whereon a good man liketh best to 
 be approached, of kindness and humanity : for it is more blessed to give 
 than to receive. Yet, to keep their character clear from all associations 
 of mendicity or meanness, there is no scrip nor purse, nor obsequious 
 demeanour allowed them, nothing that might take from the heavenly 
 condition of the men; no demand for food or raiment; what is set 
 before them they partake of; and the spiritual knowledge and power 
 which they possess they as freely give in return. If none is worthy, 
 they pass on: if they are persecuted, they escape away, as it were, 
 fishing the land, and taking in their spiritual net the worthiest and the 
 best thereof; establishing the everlasting covenant between God and 
 good men, between heaven and whatever is best upon the earth. They 
 are kept in close dependence upon God's assistance, and cannot move 
 a step but in the strength of faith. They are delivered out of the 
 conditions of policy, out of the conditions of force, out of the condi- 
 tions of gain, out of the conditions of selfishness and of ambition; for 
 I defy any one maxim which appertaineth to these four spheres of 
 
A 2 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 human activity to help them one jot in fulfilling their instructions: and 
 they are delivered into the spiritual conditions of the spiritual kingdom 
 which they went about to propagate. In prayer and communion with 
 the Spirit- of God they sail along upon an unseen and unpiloted course. 
 They are living models of what they teach ; moving epistles of the 
 Spirit of God; incarnations, each one in his measure, of the divine 
 nature; instead of the Scriptures to those who have them not, and 
 commendations of the Scriptures to those who have them. And if, as 
 hath been said, the Bible is its own witness, these men who personified 
 all its truth that can be personified, and with their lips spoke the rest, 
 must be their own witness. And by being hindered from worldly in- 
 terests and worldly attachments, they are hindered from worldly 
 discourse. They address only the immortal part of the people; they 
 confer upon no news but the good news of the kingdon ; they touch 
 no interests but the interests of eternity; speak of no country but 
 heaven, in no authority but the name of God. Which four things, 
 wisdom to address the worthiest people, entire dependence upon God, 
 exemplification of the doctrine, and constant debate with the spirits of 
 men, are surely four of the great principles in the propagation of the 
 gospel. And it is incredible from how many altercations, from how 
 many aberrations of purpose, and strivings of passion, and oppositions 
 of interest, they are cut off. For if they are brought into debate, it 
 must be for some spiritual sake, and spiritual truth must be elicited. 
 If they are mistreated, it must be in the face of justice and innocency, 
 which makes friends to the injured; and, doubtless, whatever hap- 
 peneth, good or ill to them, good must come out of it to a cause thus 
 implicated with no earthly interests and devoted wholly to spiritual 
 ends. 
 
 They who go forth to extend temporal power, and lay the founda- 
 tions of earthly dominion, may and must go in the strength of chariots, 
 and horsemen, and munitions of war ; they who go forth to establish 
 an influence and empire over royal courts, may go in the strength of 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. *~ 
 
 all-subduing 1 wealth, and diplomatic cunning ; and they who go forth 
 to discover the unknown regions and limits of the terraqueous globe, 
 must go with the state of science, and in the strength of bold adventure. 
 But they who went forth to bring all earthly powers under the Prince 
 of Peace, and to subdue all arts and policies of man to the child-like 
 simplicity of the wisdom which cometh from above, and to spread the 
 spiritual kingdom of Christ over the bounds of the terraqueous globe, 
 must divest themselves of those helps and instruments whereby the 
 others prosper. They must not cast out Beelzebub by Beelzebub. 
 They must not conquer a peace with arms in their hands, which, 
 though a good enough combination of words for the earth, is a solecism 
 in the speech of heaven. By being under mammon, they will never 
 come to be under God: by conferring with Belial, they will never hold 
 communion with Christ. Each kind hath its appropriate equipment ; 
 that which is appropriate to the powerful is power, to the politic is 
 policy, to the scientific is science, to the spiritual is the Holy Spirit. 
 The weapons of their warfare are not carnal, but spiritual ; yet powerful 
 to the pulling down of strongholds. The stone that Daniel saw cut 
 out without hands, must swell without the help of human hands, and 
 fill the earth. The kingdom which is to cast down every other king- 
 dom, must be independent of those kingdoms which it casteth down ; 
 must establish itself in its own proper strength ; and living in this 
 heaven-derived strength, must live for ever. 
 
 Such a life of occupation round and round the land as was appointed 
 to these men, is a disinterested, is a philosophical, is a sage, is a divine 
 manner of life. Socrates, the wisest man of antiquity, of whom it may 
 be s.iid, that of all the heathen he was the man most after God's own 
 heart, and who, from his pure soul struck out conceptions which were 
 like morning stars in the darkness, heralds of the dawn, not only saw 
 the high dignity of such a life, but had the resolution to fulfil in 
 Athens, in the heart of polished Athens, this very way of life which 
 Christ appointed to His missionary servants. And he was so blessed 
 
44 
 
 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 in his deed, that, though he lost his natural life (least valuable of 
 spiritual possessions !) he founded a school of master minds, which 
 wielded the longest-lived empire, and hold to this day the highest 
 place, among the uninspired sons of men. Socrates foresaw what the 
 Spirit of wisdom appointed. For verily, the twelve apostles and seventy 
 missionaries were each a Socrates in his kind ; and greater than a 
 Socrates : for Socrates went about in quest of wisdom, and complained 
 that he could not find it, because it is not of the earth ; but they had 
 found it, being supplied with it from heaven. Nay, further, I will 
 make bold to say, that if our wisdom were Christian or even Socratic, 
 it would prefer no other way of life. It is our folly, our earthliness 
 which binds us to the fardels of this world. The spirit of man spurneth 
 them by its proper nature, and effecteth emancipation from their 
 bondage, in proportion as it is conformed to that Spirit of Truth which 
 possessed these twelve most honoured of the sons of men. 
 
 Now, bad as the world is, wild as is its ambition, heartless as is its 
 vanity, proud as its riches are, and mad as they are all, ambition, 
 vanity and riches, I cannot but please myself with the imagination 
 that there is no clime so barbarous, or, (which I believe the more 
 dangerous extreme), there is no region so polished, as not to possess a 
 gleaning of worthy spirits to welcome these travellers between heaven 
 and earth. For there is no visible thing about them to create hatred ; 
 the men come in the name of peace : there is no visible thing to excite 
 jealousy; the men are possessed of nothing, and coveting nothing: 
 there is no visible thing to excite envy, for the men call nothing but 
 their life their own, and even of that they are not careful ; and the} 7 
 meddle with no earthly concern, and have no earthly end, and walk 
 in innocency, and live in simplicity, and cleave to no sect or party of 
 men, and know no coi.ntry, and intend no interests ; and their tidings 
 are all from heaven, and their discourse all of immortality, and their 
 debate ever holden with the immortal soul, and* the end of their minis- 
 tration is the salvation of mankind ; and it is virtue which they com- 
 
TlIE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 45 
 
 mend, and peace which they promote, and charity toward all which 
 they enforce ; and a blessing goeth with them, and health cometh to 
 the house where they abide and the Son of Peace resteth there, and 
 salvation entereth in as into the house Zaccheus, that day they 
 arrive. I cannot help thinking that the men were well endowed for 
 their work, and that their work was worthy of the endowment, and 
 that they would find in the worst of climes (as verily they did, for 
 these same twelve planted the gospel far and near, from India to the 
 British Isles) a class of men, and that the highest, to give them wel- 
 , come. The ambitious, I see, would spurn them, and they would be 
 content to be spurned ; the cruel, I see, would maltreat them, and they 
 would be content to be maltreated ; the hollow-hearted wits and 
 satirists would make merry with them, and they would be content to 
 be made merry withal ; and the busy bustling crowd would pass them 
 unheeded, and they would be content all unheeded to be passed. 
 "What do these babblers say? " "They seem to be setters forth of 
 strange gods." " Great is Diana of the Ephesians." " They set up 
 another king, one Jesus." "Away with them, they are not worthy to 
 live." I hear these sentences echoing round their path ; and I see them 
 following it fearlessly onward to the death. But do I not see a Felix 
 trembling, and a royal Agrippa knitting his half-convinced brows, and 
 a judge of Areopagus blessing the heavenly tidings, and a Jason giving 
 pledges for them, and a Gamaliel speaking before senates in their 
 behalf, a Dorcas, a Lydia, and honourable women not a few, waiting 
 upon the wants of the all-enduring men ? and the thoughtful of the 
 people are pondering the words which they speak, and the serious 
 minded are applying their heart to the doctrine, and charity is leading 
 them by the hand, and brotherly humanity is opening to them the gate, 
 and affliction, comforted by their presence, is anointing them with 
 tears of joy ; and the genius of every high and heavenly faculty of the 
 soul is sitting at their feet, well pleased to be schooled and taught by 
 the messengers of heaven. I see they are but searching the land for 
 
4 6 
 
 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 the good, the noble, and the true, leaving the wretched which love the 
 earthly garbage to wallow in their sensualities. They are gathering 
 each sweet and savoury plant, leaving the weeds standing for a devour- 
 ing conflagation which is to come. The fire of heaven hath come 
 down unto the earth, (for these twelve were baptized with fire) ; but it 
 loved not the earthly elements, and ran along seeking materials which 
 had some savour of the worthy regions from whence it came, which 
 having found, it took and enkindled, and left in a heavenly blaze each 
 one in his place, to purify, enlighten, and enkindle the region round 
 about. 
 
II. 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THIS MISSIONARY CONSTITUTION 
 PROVED. 
 
 I. From the Document itself. 
 
 SUCH was the character and the commission which Messiah crave 
 to the twelve apostles, whom He sent forth to preach the glad 
 tidings of His kingdom ; and when He afterwards preferred other 
 seventy to the same high office, He gave them their instructions in 
 nearly the same terms. He never afterwards repealed these instruc- 
 tions ; He never afterwards added to them. And when He enlarged 
 their commission from the limits of Judea to the utmost bounds of the 
 habitable earth, He gave them no new directions, no new promises, no 
 new warnings or predictions, nothing further, save the assurance that 
 He was with them to the end of the world. When these men, schooled 
 according to this discipline, went forth afterwards in the same behalf, 
 it is not to be imagined therefore that they would adopt other prin- 
 ciples than those which they had already received from their Master, 
 and practised with so much success. And if they would not, then it is 
 not to be imagined that we ought, unless some speciality in our case 
 can be shewn of importance enough to annul these commandments of 
 Christ, and make the example of the apostles of none effect. But as 
 it is of great importance that this point be established beyond all doubt, 
 we have given it a separate place in this argument, and shall now 
 proceed as was proposed : 
 
 To shew that these instructions are of continual obligation, present 
 the everlasting type of the missionary character, and are not by any 
 human authority to be altered or abridged. To establish this most 
 
AFTER 
 *t w 
 
 important conclusion, let us first apply ourselves to the document 
 itself, that we may ascertain from its style and matter, whether it is 
 meant to be local and temporary, or universal and everlasting. Now 
 we are bold to say, that from the beginning to the ending of it, there 
 is not a single sentence (save two afterwards to be considered) upon 
 which the whole Church of Christ hath not passed a judgment, that it 
 was pronounced for the constant use and edification of all who put 
 themselves in jeopardy for the sake of the spiritual kingdom. Every 
 promise in it hath become a standing order of the Church ; its predic- 
 tions have been fulfilled in every realm where the gospel of Christ hath 
 been preached ; and the first preachers of the gospel in every realm 
 have established their hearts with the consolation which it containeth. 
 The direction "tobeAviseas serpents and harmless as doves," hath 
 always been the policy of Christ's confessors. The assurance "-that 
 the Lord would put into their mouth what they should say," hath 
 always been the fountain of their eloquence. The privilege, when 
 " persecuted in one city to flee into another," hath always been the 
 measure of their self-preservation. The declaration " that the disciple 
 is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord," hath been 
 their support under every infamous accusation. The knowledge "that 
 the sparrows are objects of God's care, and that He numbereth the 
 very hairs upon the heads of His servants," hath sustained them in the 
 utmost jeopardy and straits. The promise of Christ, " to confess before 
 His Father those who confessed Him before men, to save the everlast- 
 ing life of those who laid down their temporal life for His sake, to be 
 instead of father and mother to those who preferred His cause to filial 
 duty," and every other sentence, of Avhatever kind, whether breathing 
 SOITOAV or joy, foreboding ill or promising good, hath become, as it 
 were, an armorial bearing to the soldiers of the militant Church, house- 
 hold words in the city of our Zion, with Avhich she traineth up her sons 
 and her daughters to be valorous for the Lord. Can a document, then, 
 I ask, to which the Church in all ages and in all countries hath attached 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 49 
 
 an everlasting importance, and which contains with it the watch-words 
 of every battle that hath been struck in this spiritual warfare, the last 
 breathings of every valiant man who hath sacrificed his all for its 
 sake, can such a document be allowed to perish ? Shall any base- 
 born generation be allowed to hide it from the eye of the Church ? 
 Accursed be the generation that would harbour the thought. Shall any 
 man or body of men, to answer their ends, veil it up or venture to 
 annul it ? Let him be anathema maranatha. 
 
 And it is nothing to the prejudice of this reasoning, that the docu- 
 ment containeth two clauses which are local and temporary, and which 
 can by no means be applied to anything beyond that journey among 
 the -towns and villages of Jewry, upon which they were sent, and from 
 which, we are told, they soon returned with gladness. " Go not into 
 the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter ye 
 not ; but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." " Ye shall 
 not have gone over the cities of Israel until the Son of man be come." 
 For it was necessary to define the extent of their first peregrination, 
 otherwise they would not have known whither to direct their steps, or 
 when to return to attend upon their Lord, for whose witness they were 
 chosen ; and there is no more of a local and temporary nature than just 
 to guide them in this essential point. They are directed to limit 
 themselves to the lost sheep of Judah, because, before they had gone 
 this round, the Son of man would come ; that is, would openly an- 
 nounce Himself to the nation. Now, because Lie marked their route, 
 and gave them an idea of the duration of their journey, will any man 
 infer that His instructions and counsels were intended only for that 
 journey, and were to be cast away when it was over ? that man would 
 make his Saviour's words of less value than the words of the most 
 ignorant parent, who giveth parental counsel to his child, which the 
 child holds sacred till death, never dreaming that it is cancelled at the 
 expiration of his first absence, and if not repeated, is to be cast at his 
 feet. 
 
* MtSSf Off ARIES AFTER 
 
 But the document containeth within itself the direct refutation of 
 these detractions from its dignity, and restrictions of its duration. For, 
 except in those two clauses by which it was necessary to define the 
 extent of this first peregrination, there is hardly another clause which 
 is not rendered insignificant and even absurd by being applied to that 
 solitary journey. It is said, " Beware of men, for they will deliver you 
 up to councils, and they will scourge you in their synagogues." Now, 
 we have not the slightest hint that any of the twelve or seventy suffered 
 indictments before civil councils, or scourgings at the hands of religious 
 rulers during this journey, from which they returned with joy, con- 
 fessing that they had lacked nothing. And, indeed, I know not what 
 councils there were in the towns of Judea (for they went not to 
 Jerusalem) before which they could be brought. Again, it is said, 
 " Ye shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake ;" and 
 it is further said, "For a testimony against them and the Gentiles." 
 Now, what kings, governors, or Gentiles, could they be brought before, 
 or testify against, in a journey, within whose bounds there was neither 
 king nor governor, and during which they were not "to go in the 
 way of a Gentile ?" And we have warnings of brother delivering up 
 brother to death, and the father the child, and the children rising up 
 against their parents and causing them to be put to death ; and yet 
 all the twelve returned returned safe and sound. Again, it is said, 
 "Ye shall be hated of all men for rny name's sake ;" did that come to 
 pass in this journey? Again, " He that endureth to the end shall be 
 saved;" is it meant to the end of this short journey ? But further to 
 apply this experimentum crucis to the hypothesis that these instructions 
 were intended for this journey only, would produce such a tissue of 
 absurdities, as might destroy in my hearers that grave frame of mind 
 with which discourses from this place ought always to be heard. 
 Therefore, let what hath been said suffice for shewing the evidence, 
 which the document yields to its own durability, and the express 
 denial and flat contradiction which it gives to every daring temporiser ; 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. ^ 
 
 and let us proceed onward in the establishment of this our second head 
 of discourse, whereof, if we succeed in convincing this assembly and 
 the Christian Church, we shall have done no mean service to the 
 missionary cause. 
 
 Against the perpetuity of these instructions, an objection may be 
 taken from a passage in the 22d chapter of the Gospel by Luke, 
 where they are alluded to in such a way as, to a superficial reader, 
 might seem to repeal them, and to substitute others in their room. 
 It is as follows : " And he said unto them, When I sent you 
 without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything ? And they 
 answered, Nothing. Then said he unto them, But now he that hath a 
 purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip ; and he that hath no 
 sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." If this passage referreth 
 to the same object as the other, viz., the propagation of the kingdom 
 of Christ, it doth make a remarkable alteration indeed ; not only per- 
 mitting the help of purse and provisions of life, but also of instruments 
 of war ; and while it gives a permission to the two former, makes the 
 latter indispensable, requiring the missionary, who is without a sword, 
 to sell his garment to buy one. This the crusaders fulfilled to the 
 letter, who converted all their property into steel and armed men, and 
 went forth in panoply to spread the gospel of peace. But as no one in 
 these times is disposed to fit out such an evangelical armament, all 
 confessing it to be against the spirit and the letter of the gospel, no use 
 can be made of this passage to invalidate any part of the other. It 
 cannot be in part taken and in part rejected. The mercenary spirit of 
 these times will not lay hold of the purse and scrip, while they deny to 
 the crusader the sword which is made peremptory, while the others are 
 but licensed. So that we might dismiss the passage as totally inap- 
 plicable to the propagation of the kingdom, and leave the man who 
 useth it against the argument of this discourse, to deliver himself from 
 the dilemma into which he brings himself, of converting every 
 Christian mission into a crusade. But, that we may carry along with 
 
$2 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 us as much conviction as possible, we shall interrupt our course for a 
 moment to explain the true intention of our Saviour in this remarkable 
 passage, which \ve have seen strangely employed both by the enemies 
 and the friends of His cause. 
 
 It was spoken to the eleven after the institution of the supper, 
 immediately before they arose and retired to the garden of Gethsemane, 
 where our Lord was straightway betrayed into the hands of His 
 enemies ; being the lust words whifrh He uttered to them before the 
 hour and the power of darkness had the ascendency over Him. For 
 they had no sooner reached the Mount of Olives, where the garden 
 was, than His agonies and temptations came hastening in thick array 
 upon His innocent head. And it is to be regarded as a warning of the 
 terrors which were closing in upon their Master and His cause, a 
 permission to provide for their own safety, as best they could, and an 
 intimation that the Son of Peace, which went with them on their 
 former journey, standing them instead of purse and scrip and defensive 
 arms, was now unable to defend Himself, being about to bow His 
 head and expire upon an accursed tree. Therefore, said He, Until 
 these days of darkness be overpast, and times of refreshing have come 
 from the presence of the Lord, let every one of you betake himself to 
 his natural shifts, and consider himself no longer as the child of an 
 invisible providence. And accordingly, while His cause continued 
 under this eclipse, they were delivered each one into his own protec- 
 tion ; and when he rose from the dead His first instructions to them 
 was, to depart from the scene of danger into a retired mountain of 
 Galilee, (perhaps that same where they had been set apart,) and wait 
 there till He should come and take them out of the hands of this 
 temporary expediency. But before ascending from them for ever, He 
 was at pains to assure them that He had triumphed over His enemies, 
 and that all power was given to Him in heaven and in earth, and that 
 He would send them His Holy Spirit, a better comforter and provider 
 than the former Son of Peace ; therefore, restoring them again to their 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 S3 
 
 former divine liberty, He said, Go forth into all nations, and lo, I am 
 with you unto the end of the world. 
 
 That these words, which He spoke on the eve of this hour of 
 darkness, were intended only for the use of that awful season, is not a 
 conjecture, but the result of a deep consideration and analysis of the 
 context, which, for your further satisfaction, I shall not hesitate to lay 
 before you. The supper, which in every word and action signified His 
 immediate death, was instituted and ended ; but His disciples con- 
 tinued as steadfast as ever in their misapprehension and unbelief : 
 which they manifested by beginning to dispute about precedency in that 
 kingdom which they expected Him to establish. With a delicacy and 
 wisdom, which breathed in all He said, He first corrected their worldly 
 ideas of dignity, and explained that their true dignity in His kingdom 
 should consist in judging the twelve tribes of Israel. Thence pursuing 
 the discourse, that they might be humbled out of their present disposi- 
 tion or pride, which is Satan's snare, He warned them of the danger to 
 which they stood exposed from the temptations of Satan. This part 
 of His discourse He addressed to Simon, foreseeing his fall, and wish- 
 ing to administer to him comfort under the deep contrition and sorrow 
 that was to follow it " Simon, Simon, behold Satan hath desired to 
 have you, (the twelve,) that he may sift you as wheat ; but I have 
 prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not, and when thou art converted, 
 strengthen thy brethren." This brought forth Peter's protestation, and 
 our Lord's prediction of his frailty, which is, as it were, a digression in 
 the discourse with the twelve ; whom having warned of Satan's snares, 
 assured of His own prayers for their sakes, and advertised of their need 
 to be strengthened, He immediately adds the passage under con- 
 sideration, as His counsel to them in the emergency which He had 
 foretold. Fearing lest they might trust to that same protection which 
 had been extended over them hitherto, and which had so wonderfully 
 provided for their wants in their former journey, He turns their atten- 
 tion to their former experience, by the question, " When ye went forth 
 
q^ MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 without purse or scrip, lacked ye anything ? " and they answered, 
 "Nothing." Having- thus fixed their minds upon their former estate, 
 in order to make the impending change of their circumstances the more 
 remarkable, He added, " But now he that hath a purse let him take it, 
 and his scrip, and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and 
 buy one." That is, trust not now, under these perilous trials of Satan 
 just coming on you, to be supported with any help supernatural. For 
 my kingdom is to suffer violence, and the violent will take it by force. 
 Therefore, look ye every man to himself, and to his resources ; and be 
 upon your guard from violence, which is more to be dreaded by you 
 than the wants of nature and the inclemency of the skies ; and though 
 you should sell your garment to provide a defence for your lives, sell 
 it, and therewith purchase that defence. "For," He immediately 
 added, as the reason of the innovation, and He added it in His most 
 solemn manner " For, I say unto you, that this that is written must 
 yet be accomplished in me, And he was reckoned among the trans- 
 gressors : for the things concerning me have an end." ' If anything 
 were wanting to confirm what hath been said of this passage, it were to 
 be found in this reason expressly assigned by the Saviour himself for 
 the innovation which He made. I am to be treated as a transgressor 
 and a malefactor, and the predictions concerning rny death have now 
 their accomplishment. Therefore, banish these high notions of power 
 and dignity ; for Satan is now about to sift you as wheat, and ye shall 
 find none of my help which heretofore sustained you, but you shall 
 find your own weakness, and be forced upon your natural defences: for 
 the meanwhile, therefore, humble yourselves to the expectations of 
 ordinary men, and have your refuge in the resources of persecuted men. 
 In all this there is nothing which hath or can have a wider applica- 
 tion than to that hour of darkness, during which the glory of His king- 
 dom was eclipsed. And, even of this season, that it was not to be 
 literally interpreted, is manifest from the scene which immediately took 
 place. The disciples mistaking His meaning, made answer to Him in 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. ^ 
 
 these words, " Lord, here are two swords." And Tie answered them, 
 " It is enough ; " that is, it is enough that I have reduced your minds 
 from these high and towering expectations of power, which would have 
 cast you upon ruin, to the lowly sense of your weakness, and the pru- 
 dent thought of your safety. But they, imagining that He really 
 meant them to use these two swords with which they were provided, 
 said, when the rout came upon Him in the garden, "Lord, shall we 
 smite with the sword ? " and Peter actually lifted up his sword, and 
 smote the high priest's servant, and cut off his ear. To which action 
 our Lord made this reply, " Put up again thy sword into his place : for 
 all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword." Which shews 
 that not only did Tie not intend the sentence under consideration to be 
 understood of the propagation, but not even of the defence of His 
 cause ; that so far from intending it to be applied literally to all times, 
 He did not intend it to be literally applied even to that time of oppres- 
 sion, for the sake of which it was spoken. That it was to be under- 
 stood, as we have explained it, for a strong and figurative way of re- 
 ducing their minds from the ambitious thoughts of power which their 
 question indicated, down to a lowly sense of their true condition, its 
 trials, and its dangers. 
 
 We have been the more particular concerning this passage of Scrip- 
 ture, because it is the only one which seems to bear against those pri- 
 mitive instructions of the missionary, for the perpetual obligation of 
 which we hold the argument. This being rightly interpreted, (and no 
 one but a crusader could think of interpreting it of the missionary 
 cause), every other part of Scripture proves that the apostles carried 
 these instructions rigorously into effect. On the clay of Pentecost, 
 when they were furnished with all manner of gifts necessary for the 
 work of converting the nations, there was nothing appertaining to 
 purse or scrip, to power or influence, to name or reputation, bestowed 
 on them. The things interdicted by the Saviour continued to be inter- 
 dicted by the Spirit ; for outwardly the men remained unaltered, after 
 
H MISSION A RIES A FTER 
 
 they had been inwardly endowed with the word of wisdom, the word 
 of knowledge, the gift of prophecy and miracles, the gifts of tongues 
 and the interpretation of tongues. If money and provisions, if goods 
 and possessions had been necessary, why were they not bestowed at 
 this time, when heaven furnished out its ministers to all nations ? But 
 that needed not to be bestowed from heaven, which was soon forth- 
 coming in all abundance. For in these times, as soon as the Spirit 
 took hold of the converts, He made them indifferent to all outward 
 distinctions and emoluments wherein they formerly prided themselv&s. 
 And not only the missionaries, but even the converts of the missionaries, 
 becoming careless of purse and scrip, and possessions, forgot the dis- 
 tinctions of thine and mine, and parted their all to such as had need. 
 Now the apostles, when plenty of everything came flowing into their 
 power, kept free from the worldly incumbrance, and continued break- 
 ing bread from house to house, and did eat their meat with gladness 
 and singleness of heart. And when they went forth to the temple, so 
 true kept they by Christ's first instructions, that the)' said unto a man 
 who sought an alms, " Silver and gold have we none." And when the 
 converts brought their all and poured it at their feet, not only would 
 they not own any of it, but they would not, for the sake of holy charity 
 and sacred justice, be diverted by its distribution from the higher and 
 better calling, of giving themselves wholly to the ministry of the word 
 and to prayer. And they continued as they began ; for throughout the 
 whole book of the Acts there is not one word from which it can be 
 gathered that, in journeying from town to town, and from region to 
 region, they had any convenience of travel, abode in any houses of 
 public entertainment, possessed any property which they could call 
 their own, or in any way deviated from the spirit, or from the very 
 letter, of our Lord's instructions. While they abode in a place, they 
 continued, according to the commandment of the Lord, in the house 
 of one man, whom, when writing letters from the place, they call their 
 host, When Paul went up to Jerusalem, he communicated that gospel 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. * 
 
 which he preached among- the Gentiles to them only which were of 
 reputation, using the privilege of inquiring after the most worthy. 
 When the Jews of any town would no longer hear him, he condemned 
 them, and turned unto the Gentiles ; and when with one accord both 
 Jews and Gentiles rose up against him, he shook off the dust of his 
 feet against that city, and proceeded on his course. In short, I find 
 not one of the instructions which they did not literally carry into effect. 
 They had no wages ; they depended upon no remittances ; they lived 
 all ilong and altogether upon the brethren. 
 
 And the gospel must surely have changed its nature, and abated its 
 efficacy, when the converts shall become loth to support the man, who, 
 under God, hath brought them from darkness to light, and from the 
 service of Satan to serve the living God. And the converts must be 
 miserable indeed, if they have not bread and water for the mouth which 
 hath brought them glad tidings of great joy. For in the primitive 
 times it was counted an honour, not a burden, to give them the small 
 accommodation which they needed. Cornelius prayed Peter to tarry 
 with him certain days. Lydia, as the first-fruits of her conver- 
 sion, besought Paul and Silas in these words, " If ye have judged 
 me to be faithful, come into my house and abide there.'* At Corinth, 
 while yet Paul held with the Jews, he abode with Aquila, and 
 wrought at his craft; but when he turned unto the Gentiles he en- 
 tered into the house of Justus, one that worshipped God, and abode 
 there. And on parting from the elders of the Ephesian church, he 
 said, " I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel ; but these 
 hands have ministered to my necessities, and those that are with me." 
 Which two last instances shew us how they were wont at times to 
 labour for their bread, that they might not be burdensome ; but that 
 this was the exception, and not the rule of their proceedings, is manifest 
 from Paul's apology for it in his Epistle to the Corinthians. The rule 
 was, to follow out the unworldly, unselfish, unambitious way of life 
 which Christ had taught, to be wholly careless of the present world, 
 
-$ MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 wholly disengiged from its concerns, that they might be wholly 
 occupied with the things of the world to come. 
 
 And when deviations do occur in 'the practice of the primitive times, 
 from this exact ritual of the missionary laid down by our Lord, they 
 are of that kind which confirm the spirit of the rule, being all devia- 
 tions by excess, not by defect, of its peculiar characteristics. Paul, in 
 these two instances of Ephesus and Corinth, saw it good to forego the 
 right of living by his ministry, but in foregoing it he carefully excepted 
 against its being considered as a precedent. " Have we not power to 
 eat and to drink ? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, 
 as well as other apostles, or as the brethren of the Lord and Cephus ? 
 or I only, and Barnabas, have not we power to forbear working ? " In 
 these questions of the indignant apostle, is revealed the custom of the 
 first founders of the kingdom, to go from place to place, carrying with 
 them no earthly means, and devoting themselves to no worldly calling, 
 but depending upon the benevolence of the worthy, and having their 
 feet shod with no preparation but the preparation of the gospel of petice. 
 In his triumphant answers to the same questions, we have it asserted 
 as a fundamental law of the propagation of the kingdom, and supported 
 by the reasonableness of the thing, by the Mosaical laws, and last of all 
 by the ordination of the Lord, "that they which preach the gospel 
 should live by the gospel." Now, I ask, in what part of the gospel 
 this is ordained by the Lord, if not in the passage, for whose everlast- 
 ing obligation we plead, wherein it is said " For the labourer is worthy 
 of his meat?" There is not another of the Lord's sayings which 
 maketh even allusion to the subject. Here, then, Paul quoteth a 
 standing rule of the kingdom, upon the authority of this document, 
 which the practice of many moderns would wipe out of the canon. Do 
 you ask, Why, then, did Paul dare to set aside the ordinance of the 
 Lord ? Let him answer for himself. " If others be partakers of this 
 power over you, are not we rather ? Nevertheless, we have not used 
 this power ; but suffer all things, lest we should hinder the gospel of 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. ^ 
 
 Christ." He did it out of the nobile qfficium, the high prerogative of an 
 inspired apostle, because he saw that the gospel of Christ, with which 
 he was intrusted, would be advanced by his doing so ; and how 
 advanced, he hath told us in his next Epistle, when, speaking of the 
 same thing, he thus expresseth his noble and magnanimous soul : 
 " Have I committed an offence in abasing myself that ye might be 
 exalted, because I have preached unto you the gospel of God freely ? 
 I robbed other churches, taking wages of them to do you service. And 
 when I was present with you, and wanted, I was chargeable to no man : 
 for that which was lacking to me, the brethren which came from 
 Macedonia supplied : and in all things I have kept myself from being 
 burdensome to you, and so will I keep ni} T self. As the truth of Christ 
 is in me, no man shall stop me of this boasting in the regions of Achaia. 
 Wherefore ? because I love you not ? God knoweth. But what I do, 
 that will I do, that I may cut off occasion from them which desire 
 occasion ; that wherein they glory they may be found even as we. For 
 such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into 
 the apostles of Christ." These false apostles and deceitful workers 
 had accused the pilgrim-traveller from town to town, and from region 
 to region, as a needy vagabond, who thus earned dishonourable bread ; 
 whereby they sought to obstruct his success in the regions of Achaia. 
 But the pilgrim-traveller had a soul full of resources, and a heart full 
 of stoutness, to overthrow these railers against the honourable calling 
 and providential life of a missionary. Coming into the region which 
 had been poisoned against him, " he found a certain Jew, named 
 Aquila, \vith his wife Priscilla, and came unto them, and be- 
 cause they were of the same craft, he abode with them and 
 wrought: for by their occupation they were tent-makers." Thus 
 did he defeat the wicked stratagem of Satan's servants, who had trans- 
 formed themselves into the apostles of Christ, by demonstrating that 
 he sought no gain, nor cared for no livelihood, but became all things 
 to all men that he might gain the more. And though I have said the 
 
60 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 apostle did this by virtue of his apostolic prerogative, the Church will 
 suffer no damage whatever, if her missionaries, when they find the same 
 false report circulating to the prejudice of the gospel, should adopt the 
 same magnanimous course, of working with their hands, in order to 
 put the calumny to death, and triumph over it with a holy indignation 
 and joy ; and not only contribute to their own necessities, but even to 
 the necessities of others who have need. But I would advise them first 
 to beware that they become not instrumental in spreading the very 
 notion, that they are hirelings and gainers, by taking fixed and stated 
 salaries, like any other craftsmen, which is the sure and certain way to 
 make themselves not only be reputed but justly regarded as hireling 
 craftsmen. So that this example of Paul's deviation doth, as it were, 
 rivet upon both sides, the well-driven and well-directed bolt of the 
 Lord: inasmuch as he honoureth the fundamental principle, that the 
 gospel should seek and have no worldly emolument, nor depend upon 
 any expedient of earthly dignity ; while, in order to make the principle 
 triumphant in an extreme case which occurred in his travels, he reacheth 
 into the region of self-denial and destitution further than the Lord 
 required, in order to get the weapons with which to meet the new and 
 unprecedented obstacle that had been opposed to his course. And 
 while he rivets the well-directed bolt of the Lord, he reproves that poor 
 and pithless weapon with which the prudent spirit of these times aimeth 
 its puny blow at the heathen world. For, truly, we moderns have 
 taken the very means to create that stumblingblock which Paul found 
 in his way at Corinth, by so constituting the missionary office, as that 
 the men of this world might have in their mouth the very words of 
 which Paul reproved the Corinthians, and to disprove which he needed 
 to adopt this voluntary act of self-humiliation. To cure this, our 
 shallow prudence, if we would use the lesson given by this leader of 
 the missionary army, we would do well, for as many years as we have 
 fed and hired men, to require that they should go, as Paul did, into 
 the other extreme of not even eating and drinking at any one's 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. j 
 
 expense, but Unit they should support themselves by the labour of their 
 hands, and glory thereby over the false prejudice with which the cause, 
 by our mismanagement, hath come to be circumvented. This is the 
 proper use of the apostle's deviation. 
 
 Now, further, lest a sentence which occurs in the above quotations 
 should be turned aside to justify the modern method of furnishing out 
 the missionary, which the occurrence at Corinth doth so utterly 
 discountenance ; it is fortunate that, from the Epistle to the Philippians, 
 we can explain what those wages were which Paul took, and what his 
 robbery of the . churches and what the supply of the Macedonian 
 brethren, by the help of which he carried out his hardy scheme of 
 confuting the false report by which the enemy had sought to impede 
 his missionary progress. It is found written in the conclusion of his 
 Kpistle to the Philippians, (and how happy I am to make such 
 quotations, God knoweth ! for they bear my spirit up in the hopeless- 
 ness of this controversy,) " But 1 rejoiced in the Lord greatly, that 
 now at the last your care of me hath flourished again ; wherein ye 
 were also careful, but ye lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in 
 respect of want ; for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith 
 to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to 
 abound ; and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be 
 hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things 
 through Christ which strengtheneth me. Notwithstanding ye have 
 well done, that ye did communicate with my affliction. Now, ye 
 Philippians, know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I 
 departed from Macedonia, no church communicated with me as 
 concerning giving and receiving, but ye only. For even in Thessalo- 
 nica ye sent once and again unto my necessity. Not because I desire 
 x a gift ; but I desire fruit that may abound to your account. But 1 have 
 all and abound : 1 am full, having received of Epaphroditns the things 
 which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice 
 acceptable, well-pleasing to God. But my God shall supply all your 
 
62 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 need, according to his riches in glory, by Christ Jesus." This is the 
 apostle's receipt in full for his wages ; this is his voluntary confession 
 of his robbery ; this is the help with which he was helped at Corinth 
 of these good Philippians. And as the former quotations are a proof 
 of his most nice and chary delicacy lest the gospel of Christ should be 
 breathed on with any aspersion, and of his magnanimity to bear every 
 extreme of hardship, rather than the missionary calling should be 
 calumniated ; let this stand for the proof of his most generous spirit to 
 partake and receive brotherly help. And let it divide and distinguish 
 that chariness and magnanimity from the natural pride and independ- 
 ence of the human heart ; from which the former spirit is as distinct 
 and distinguishable, as the spirit of Christ, who gave all heaven's 
 glory up and took mendicant crumbs of men, is distinct and distinguish- 
 able from Satan's spirit, who, though the brightest of the sons of the 
 morning, could not brook the rich endowment, because he had to give 
 for it an act of reverence to the Most High God. And -let it shew, 
 moreover, into what straits Paul passed, and with what difficulties he 
 was beset around, in following out his missionary peregrinations, and 
 how he had no dependence upon foreign churches ; (for no one com- 
 municated with him save this of Philippi, whose gift he knew not of, 
 and expected not, till Epaphroditus brought it in his hand.) And, 
 finally, let it shew how the Lord, the Son of Peace, forsook not in his 
 wandering, His hungered, His own laborious workman, whose 
 niggard craft, oft interrupted, yielding him but a bare support, He 
 brought him supplies from afar, and made them to follow him to 
 Thessalonica, to Corinth, to Rome, everywhere through the heathen 
 desert, as the waters of Meribah and the quails of the morning and the 
 evening, followed the sandy parched footing of the camp of Israel. 
 
 After perusing which examples, will anyone say that Paul conformed 
 not to the ritual of the missionary school, because he took foreign 
 supplies when they were offered, and wrought with his hands when it 
 served his turn ? Thou art right, he conformed not ; that is, he did 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 63 
 
 more than conform ; he was an apostle, and more than an apostle, for 
 he magnified the apostleship. Go thou and do likewise. Be more 
 than a missionary, magnify the missionary office, and in such a way 
 shew thy nonconformity to the Lord's commission and passport. But 
 first, be careful that thou art a missionary, and that the office in thy 
 hand is not minished of its due size nor shorn of its proper beams. 
 
 I have heard quoted, as another deviation from the letter of the 
 missionary charter, what is obscurely hinted at in the Epistle of John, 
 addressed to Gains, in these words, " Beloved, thou doest faithfully 
 whatsoever thou doest to the brethren and to strangers ; which have 
 borne witness of thy charity before the Church ; whom if thou bring 
 forward on their journey after a godly sort, thou shalt do well ; because 
 that for his name's sake they went forth, taking nothing of the 
 Gentiles. We, therefore, ought to receive such, that we may be fellow- 
 helpers of the truth." This, like the former, proveth more for the 
 spirit of the missionary chapter, than if it had been in most exact 
 conformity with its letter ; shewing, first that the travellers and 
 ambassadors of the kingdom, in these times, were wont to be brought 
 on their way from place to place by the charity of brethren, even 
 though strangers, and did not hesitate to be beholden to their charity ; 
 secondly, that they went forth to the Gentiles without any means of 
 conveying themselves thither, but needed assistance to reach the scene 
 of their labours ; and having reached the harvest-field, they put in 
 their sickle and reaped without any hire, taking nothing for their 
 reward, but passed on, dependent as before upon the bounty'of the 
 brethren. So much the passage proves, that these Christian expedi- 
 tions were undertaken without any dependence upon ways and means, 
 and were executed without any fee or reward ; but it does by no means 
 prove that while they were with the Gentiles they refused to be 
 beholden to them for their subsistence. They took nothing from the 
 Gentiles, and needed to be helped on their way, that is, they departed 
 as poor as they came ; but how they fared amongst them is not stated, 
 
64 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 because it was not necessary for the apostle to state more than their 
 present condition, as his argument for the brethren to help them. 
 The passage, therefore, is nothing more than a certificate of the poverty 
 and disinterestedness of these missionaries, given under the hand of 
 an apostle to a brother, who, on other occasions, had been helpful to 
 the brethren. How much it supports the spirit of the apostolical 
 school of missionaries any one can see ; how it beareth upon the 
 present school, it is not yet' the time to discourse of at large. 
 
 And other instances of this kind occur in the apostolical record. 
 Paul, writing to Philemon from his bonds in Rome, desires him to 
 provide him a lodging, trusting that through their prayers he would 
 be given to them. He was then Paul the aged, and Philemon was his 
 dearly beloved brother and fellow-labourer, from whom he might, 
 without fear of misconstruction, ask such a favour ; yet with what 
 delicacy he touches upon pecuniary matters, anyone who reads that model 
 of delicate affection may well apprehend. At Rome, in like manner, 
 he dwelt two years in his own hired house, and received all that came 
 in unto him ; because he was there as a prisoner upon parole, and 
 accommodated his apostolic character to his'forced conditions ; but on 
 his journey to Rome, the missionary constitution was fulfilled to the 
 letter by the biethren at Puteoli, with whom he was desired to stay 
 seven days ; and also by the brethren at Rome, who met him at the 
 Three Taverns and conducted him on his way. In like manner, Titus 
 is instructed to bring Zenas the lawyer, and Apollos, on their journey 
 diligently, that nothing be wanting unto them. In like manner, he 
 writes to the Corinthians concerning Timotheus, that they would 
 u conduct him forth in peace, that he may come unto me." And of 
 such importance was this part of apostolical discipline held, that it is 
 enjoined in general precepts like any other great head of Christian 
 duty, "to distribute to the necessity of saints, and to be given to 
 hospitality ;" and it is set down as a mark of those widows who are to 
 be taken into the number, "that they have lodged strangers ;" and of 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 6^ 
 
 a bishop it is required, as an indispensable quality, that he should be 
 given to hospitality ; and to all it is often enjoined, as to the Hebrews, 
 li that they be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some 
 have entertained angels unawares." 
 
 Sometimes, in casting my eye back over what I have written, and 
 considering the new doctrine which I have dared to advance in 
 opposition to the universal practice of the churches, I have felt a fear 
 come over my mind, as if I had been guilty of presumption in daring to 
 interpret God's word, upon this subject, for myself. But the more I 
 have been led to study it, by the opposition which these ideas have 
 received, the more I have been convinced of their truth. The passages 
 which have been quoted against them, have, upon deliberate study, 
 turned out to be in their favour ; and the instances which have been 
 given of deviation, have always proved to be deviations in excess, not 
 in defect, of the standard of faith and self-denial. Moreover, in 
 making those researches into the primitive appointments of Messiah, 
 and practices of His apostolic servants, many new convictions have 
 been brought to our mind concerning the office of the pastor, and the 
 office of the preacher, which differ from the approved notions as widely 
 as those which we have set forth of the missionary. So that, silently, 
 we have come to the strong and steady persuasion that this is but a 
 silver age of the Church, taken at its best, and that the golden age is 
 yet to come ; that we are not perfect any more than our fathers ; that 
 we should learn to believe in our imperfections, and welcome any one 
 who will honestly declare them to us. 
 
 Sometimes, on the other hand, I have been tempted to indignation 
 and wrath, that the institution and appointment of the great head of 
 the Church should have been so widely departed from in these modern 
 times, and being honestly ancl plainly stated, should find so little 
 fivour in the eyes of a generation which prideth itself in the 
 evangelical character of its missionary undertakings. And that, instead 
 of going about to seek men who were advanced in faith to the height 
 
66 MISSIONARIES AFTER ' 
 
 of the undertaking, they have gone about to reduce the undertaking 
 to the measure of an ordinary faith, and have attracted to the 
 service many who were hardly fit for a pastoral care in the 
 Church at home, much less for laying the foundation of Christian 
 empire abroad. Rut most of all hath a holy indignation risen 
 within my breast, when to keep up the popular glory and renown of 
 their work, which they should be ever rectifying by the word of God, 
 they should be content rather to 'obliterate and annul that part of 
 His holy word which is able to give them counsel. It is instructive of 
 the self-exaltation of man to hear with what cool indifference they 
 would consign to uselessness those immortal counsels which our Lord 
 gave for the conduct of Christian missionaries, in order that they may 
 have the field open for their own infallibility. They would break 
 through all rules and laws of interpretation, and to a passage whose 
 every word and sentence breathes immortality, they would give a 
 temporary application, destroying its obligation', losing its comfort, and 
 abolishing its promises to the evil-entreated messenger of peace : all 
 because it contains in its bosom two clauses which were necessary to 
 make it useful and applicable to the time which then was, as well as to 
 the times which were to come. Against this I have argued by an 
 analysis of the passage, against it I have protested by an appeal to the 
 apostolical times, in the hope of being able to prevail by argument and 
 appeal ; though, I confess, with slender hope in a time when names or 
 periodical organs of opinion have obtained almost the whole authority 
 in the Church. 
 
 But if there be left in the Church any reverence for the Holy Scrip- 
 ture, any love to the words of Christ, any superiority to the things 
 of sight, and trust in the good promises of God, any memory of her 
 past triumphs, or any hope of future victory, by these I do entreat the 
 Church to hesitate how she discredits this position of the Holy Scrip- 
 ture, because it applied to these times no less than to all other times. 
 For upon the same principle she would annul every word of the Ser- 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. ^ 
 
 mon on the Mount, which was suggested by Jewish'errors, and was given 
 for the abolition of Jewish errors ; and every parable, and every rebuke, 
 and every exhortation, and every instruction of the Lord, which all sprung 
 out of theocca-ion presented to him, and applied to it with far more exemp- 
 tion of every other occasion than the passage before us ; which, if it be 
 distinguished by anything, is distinguished by this, from most other of 
 our Lord's discourses, that it will not apply cannot by any shewing be 
 made to apply to that occasion, but bursts all limitations of time and 
 place, and writes its own superscription to be, to the Church universal 
 upon the earth. There are some passages in our Lord's instructions 
 which apply only to a particular time and condition of things, such as 
 that spoken at the Last Supper, of which we have given a commentary 
 above, and which can never come to be applicable again, because the 
 Son of man can never again be removed by the hour and power of 
 darkness from the power of protecting His Church. But when any 
 man would rob the Church of any of the Lord's sayings, which the first 
 apostles were glad to catch from oblivion, rather than to convey to it, 
 (of which their zeal we have seen an instance quoted from the mission- 
 ary charter, I Cor. ix. n, and may see another, Acts xx. 35, in Paul's 
 discourse to the elders of the Ephesian Church,) then, that man should 
 be indicted as guilty of high treason to our King, who liveth upon 
 earth only in His words, of sedition against His kingdom, whose laws 
 are the words of our everlasting King. 
 
 Foolish men ! vain, ignorant, and foolish men ! they know not what 
 they do, in their haste to annul the precious words of Christ ; neither 
 understand they the nature of the words of Christ which they would 
 annul. The glorious words of Christ were not for one occasion, but 
 for all occasions ; not for one race of men, but for all races of men ; not 
 for one age, but for all ages of the world. And yet, in that which He 
 said, there was always something local, temporary, and occasional, 
 enough of the present time and present manners, for it to lay hold of 
 the feelings of the present audience. But because the eternal truth 
 
63 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 which He spoke, had around it the drapery of the times, did it thereby 
 become temporary ? We, whose souls are educated in time, being of 
 yesterday, do smack of time in all our thoughts and speeches, except 
 wherein we are guided by revelations of eternity ; but He who was 
 from eternity, the same yesterday, to-day and for ever, partaketh not, 
 and cannot partake, of the same infirmity. The truth which He 
 spoke, is truth metaphysical, that is, truth independent of the 
 conditions of time and place, applicable to all times and places, 
 and equally applicable when time shall be no more. The truth which 
 He spoke addresseth not the temporary but the eternal in man ; and by 
 awakening the immortal in us, enableth us to shake off the temporal 
 coil with which we are enslaved. Yet, as hath been said, the eternal 
 truth which He spake, and from which all ages since have derived the 
 knowledge of eternity and the sense of immortality, had a special appli- 
 cation to the people to whom it was first addressed, and took hold of 
 the forms of thought then current in the world, in order to deliver men 
 from what was false, and manifest more clearly what was true, in those 
 very things which they believed, and by which they were surrounded. 
 But this taste of the times, and glance at the occasion, must never for a 
 moment beguile us into the imagination that they reach no further, and 
 were intended to reach no further, than to that occasion. Otherwise 
 we must be content to lose all which He spoke from first to last. For 
 example : the sermon which He preached on the mount, wherein He 
 gathered up the fragments of all moral feeling and moral law, to issue 
 them anew with divine wisdom, and write them in everlasting letters, 
 not only searched into the joints and marrow of the Pharisaical sophis- 
 try and hypocrisy, but hath become to every country where it hath been 
 published abroad, the basis of law and manners, and will continue the 
 perfection of both while the world lasteth. Again, the comforting 
 speeches He made to His followers before His crucifixion, not only 
 moved them to earnest questions indicating their personal concern in 
 what He said, but have been the sustenance of Jiis disciples ever since, 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. gg 
 
 in all the trials of their lives, and in the hour of their departure ; and 
 will never cease to be as refreshing to the Church as the waters of 
 Meribah. And His prayers, however aptly addressed to the occasion 
 on which they were first uttered, are still the most frequent and the 
 most soul-impressive of all our addresses to the throne of God. And 
 those parables, whose images, like the Gorgon's head, froze His oppo- 
 nents to stony silence, are to this day the beautiful pictures of all social 
 and religious duty ; each one of them the porch and entrance to a mag- 
 nificent temple of truth and blessedness. And those very parables 
 which shadow forth the nature of His kingdom the parable of the 
 mustard seed, of the leaven, of the twelve virgins, of the steward, of 
 the royal feast, of the labourers in the vineyard, of the sower and the 
 seed, are not these as applicable now as then, and as frequently 
 enforced and applied by the ministers of the gospel ? And if in all 
 other things He spoke for eternity, yet missed not the present occasion: 
 if in all other things He spoke for all times and all occasions ; who is 
 he who will say, that when equipping and instructing the messengers 
 and missionaries of His kingdom, upon whom all the rest depended, 
 He hath said nothing perennial, but only spoken well for the occasion, 
 and must not be understood as instructing us in the same terms in which 
 He instructed them ? The man that saith or fancieth so, hath need to 
 learn again what be the first principles of the doctrine of Christ ; and 
 I warn him to beware how be taketh from or addeth to the words 
 of the prophecy of this book, lest God shall add unto him all the 
 plagues that are written in this book ; how he break one of the least of 
 these commandments, or teach others to do so, that he be not called 
 least in the kingdom of heaven. If He, the King and Founder of the 
 spiritual kingdom, in whom dwelt all the treasures of wisdom and 
 knowledge, did not understand and know the full provision and furniture 
 for His own envoys and ambassadors, the strength in which they 
 should fight, and the weapons with which they should overcome the 
 powers of darkness, I marvel, indeed, who should understand and 
 
j XZS$fONARI8$ AFTER 
 
 know them ; and if His rules fail to be applicable to our case, I marvel 
 who shall help out their inefficiency. The Church, say you ; but what 
 is the Church without its Head ? and where is its counsel without its 
 Counsellor? and where its authority without the Spirit of Christ? 
 Therefore, let no man, nor body of men, no Christian, nor society of 
 Christians, nor the whole visible Church, in their presumption, dare to 
 say, these instructions of Christ to the messengers of the kingdom are 
 now inapplicable, are Utopian, are extreme, are to be cautiously 
 interpreted, and prudently carried into effect. For if these be cast 
 aside, I, for one, see not upon what scriptural basis a missionary 
 society resteth. Nor do I see by what principle a Christian missionary 
 is to guide himself. But these instructions remaining, I perceive the 
 use of a missionary college, to see them carried into effect ; and I see 
 the calling of a missionary to be the highest upon earth, and the 
 nearest unto God ; I see that he is- a messenger, not of time, but of 
 eternity ; that his soul is dressed, not in the confidence and trust of 
 time, but of eternity ; that he is a man of faith, and of faith alone, and 
 therefore able to plant faith wherever he is permitted ; and I perceive 
 that the world is his diocese : and if the world is mad enough to 
 despatch him away from its coast, then 1 find a haven of rest and glory 
 provided for him by these his instructions. In short, without this 
 document, I am all at sea upon the missionary question, and must 
 handle it like a question of state policy, or of Church management ; 
 but preserving this, I have the Magna Charta of the missionary 
 constitution, the description, of the missionary character, the scale of 
 his qualifications, the directory of his procedure, his safe-conduct from 
 the court above, and his assurance of success upon earth, and of 
 immortality in heaven. 
 
III. 
 
 THE PERPETUITY OF THIS MISSIONARY CONSTITUTION 
 PROVED. 
 
 IT. From the Analogy of the Christian Faith and Discipline. 
 
 HAYING thus established beyond a question, from the document 
 itself, that it is v> ritten for all ages ; and having- shewn that it 
 was acted upon in the spirit, and beyond the letter, by the apostles and 
 first missionaries of the Church, I see not what remains further to be 
 said in order to prove that it ought still to be regarded as the con- 
 stitution of the missionary estate, and the directory of the missionary 
 course ; but I feel, while I speak, a certain inward admonition, to weave 
 the tissue of my argument as it were of double strength. For I seem 
 to see the apparition of many enemies, and to have the foretaste of a 
 fiery trial, for these thoughts which I have adventured forth. The 
 warlike spirit of the crusaders, who unsheathed the sword which the 
 blasphemous Father of Christendom had blessed, and unfurled the 
 consecrated banner of the cross, therewith to spread the gospel of peace, 
 and the artful spirit of the Jesuits, who brought all the stores of human 
 wit and worldly wisdom to the same great undertaking, and the spirits 
 of this moneyed and prudential age, who preach the crusade of gold as 
 eagerly as Peter the Hermit preached the crusade of steel ; all these 
 seem to arise to overwhelm the poor wight who sh ill say that neither 
 gold, nor steel, nor worldly wisdom, are essential to the equipment of 
 a missionary; but so far from being the allies of Christ in the propaga- 
 tion of the spiritual kingdom, are the three chief powers against whose 
 combined strength His servants have to make their way, and upon 
 whose humbled pride they have to lay the foundations of His empire. 
 
* 2 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 Therefore, I oft pause and look to my instructions, and see whether 
 I be well sustained in the cause which I plead, and a still small voice 
 whispereth to me that I am. The monitor within me saith unto my 
 hesitating mind, Beholdest thou not that the deficiency of earthly 
 means is balanced by the sufficiency of unearthly promises ? and that 
 though there be no purse wherewithal to purchase the means of life, 
 there is an admonition from heaven to all men, to take the unprovided 
 missionary to their home, and give him bread and water? and though 
 there be no steel with which to cleave obstacles in twain, there is the 
 word of God, which is a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces ? and 
 though there be no defence of Jesuitical wiles, there is the eye of 
 Providence which counteth every hair upon their head, and holdeth 
 their lives more dear than the beasts of the field and the fowls of 
 heaven, for which He liberally provideth? Perceivest thou not that 
 the former and the latter end of these instructions balance and sustain 
 each other, and that if the former be taken away, the latter hath no 
 counterpoise, and the whole proportion and wisdom of the passage is 
 destroyed ? Therefore, seeing it will not permit of mutilation, or of 
 abrogation, or of temporising, what can I do but redeem my pledge of 
 upholding the truth of my Master, with that liberty of prophesying 
 which this grave and revered assembly, taking example from these 
 three still more venerable assemblies, mentioned at the beginning, will 
 not hinder in him whom they have set up to prophesy to them out of 
 the word of the Lord. 
 
 It is not for the words, purse, scrip, raiment, staff, and friendship, 
 that I contend. Whether a man shall have money, provisions, com- 
 forts, conveniences of travel, and friendly sustenances, or shall not have 
 them, is not the question : Whether a man shall hide himself from all 
 the secondary means of prosperity, or shall profit by them, is not the 
 question. The question is concerning those fields of interest, those 
 spheres of ambition, and refuges of trust, which the words, purse, scrip, 
 raiment, staff, and friendship denote : Whether the missionary shall 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. *^ 
 
 occupy any of them, or. shall not: Whether he shall go forth inde- 
 pendent of them, or dependent on them : Whether his character shall 
 be moulded and modelled after the fancy of the times, and the current 
 maxims of the Christian world, or shall stand unalienable and unal- 
 terable, like the character of the pastor or the Christian. If a missionary, 
 possessing all these things, can be a man of as entire faith and devotion 
 as though he had them not, it is a small matter so far as he himself is 
 concerned ; yet not a small matter, as we shall see, so far as the success 
 of the work is concerned : but it is not a small matter, whether the idea 
 of the Christian Church concerning these offices shall be a constant or 
 a changeable thing; whether the idea of the missionary concerning his 
 office shall descend to him of God, or descend to him of men ; and 
 whether those that guide the work shall consider themselves, as in- 
 fallible to give law to the missionary, a commission, self-appointed, 
 of oyer and ter miner in this great cause, or men acting under authority, 
 under responsibility, and by exactly prescribed rules. These are 
 questions vitally concerning both the glory of God and the well-being 
 of man ; and I feel that I have been agitating a mighty matter, and am 
 myself under terrible responsibility, if I advocate not to the utmost the 
 perpetuity of these decrees. 
 
 Taking courage, therefore, I now venture a little higher into the 
 dignity of this argument, and declare that not only do the unrepealed 
 authority and the intrinsical character of these instructions bind them 
 for ever upon the propagators of the kingdom, but that, from the 
 nature of the gospel itself, he who propagates the gospel must be 
 separate from worldly interests, and stand aloof from worldly occupa- 
 tions ; and just in proportion as he getteth under the spirit of his high 
 vocation, he will, of his own accord, though there were no binding 
 precept upon the subject, cast himself into that outward condition here 
 presented to the twelve great champions of Christendom. It is not a 
 conventional, but an appropriate, not an expedient, but a necessary char- 
 acter for every one whp possessed* a certain measure of God's Spirit; 
 
74 
 
 or, to speak in the language of the metaphysical schools, it is the 
 outward and necessary from under which a certain large measure of 
 spiritual influence will always manifest itself. But first, it may be 
 necessary to explain the language which 1 use. 
 
 The twofold nature of man, body and spirit, maketh it necessary 
 that everything by which he is to be moved should have an outward 
 form. While yet it lives in spiritual essence alone, it is to him as if it 
 lived not, and its life hath over his life no influence or control. Hence 
 the great Father of Spirits hath given to all the attributes of His being 
 an outward form and manifestation. The heavens declare His glory, 
 and the earth sheweth forth His handiwork ; and the sun which 
 circleth round the earth, is the tabernacle of His effulgency. The 
 written law, which is holy and just and good, is the form of His 
 holiness : and the gospel of His Son is the form of His mercy and 
 grace. Heaven is the outward form 'of His blessedness, and hell of 
 His fearful wrath against the rebellious. And every doctrine in 
 revelation is a form to the intellect, of some spiritual attribute of the 
 Invisible ; the doctrine of the atonement, of His justice ; the doctrine 
 of the Holy Spirit, of His help. And to the most noble and capital 
 truths or doctrines, He giveth not only a form for the intellect, but for 
 the very sense of man. His incarnate Son is the fleshly form of His 
 glory, and the visible image of His person. The doctrine of our 
 natural corruption and gracious purification by the blood of Christ, 
 hath the sensible form of baptism. And the doctrine of our continued 
 sustenance by His Word and Spirit, hath the sensible form of the 
 supper. And the doctrine of the creation of the world, and the 
 resurrection of Christ, which is the re-creation of the world, had the 
 sensible form of the weekly Sabbath. And the visible Church is the 
 sensible form of the heavenly communion. And there is nothing in the 
 being and purposes of God, which it might benefit man to know, that 
 hath not a form of expressing itself to the soul of man through the 
 intellect or through the sense. 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. *- 
 
 X<MV, in like manner as God hath given to His spiritual being" a 
 constant form in revelation, so hath He appointed unto His servants 
 to manifest their spiritual being under some constant form. To every 
 man in his station He hath appointed his duties ; to the servant and 
 the master, the husband and the wife, the parent and the child, the 
 ruler and the ruled ; which duties are the outward form which His 
 Holy Spirit taketh in these persons and conditions. To a rich man, 
 He hath given rules how to use his riches, and to a poor man, how to 
 bear his poverty ; to a wise man, how to use his wisdom, and to a fool, 
 how he may be cured of his folly; to the strong, how to employ his 
 strength, and to the sick, how to bear his affliction. And so to all the 
 various gifts of nature, allotments of providence, and preferments of 
 rank and power, hath God appointed a certain formulary for their right 
 manifestation in the sight of men ; nor alloweth, without rebuke ai)d 
 chastisement, that these conditions should be otherwise occupied than 
 for the ends for which He hath bequeathed them diversel)', that they 
 might rightly occupy the diverse members of His great household, and 
 bring out the common weal of the whole family. And while over every 
 chamber of this world's variety He appointed a spiritual servant to 
 preside, He did also appoint an order of men superior to these, who 
 should travel over the many chambers of the house, and see that each 
 servant was rightly occupying till the great householder should come ; 
 stewards who should neither occupy the treasury chambers, nor the 
 attiring rooms, nor the bazaars of business, nor the museums of 
 knowledge, nor the shops of art, nor the halls of judgment, nor the 
 apartments of state and dignity, nor the saloons of grace and beauty, 
 nor the awful places of throned sovereignty ; but who should travel 
 over all these from room to room, even from the dark and laborious 
 foundations up to the stately elevations and gilded pinnacles of societv, 
 surveying the work and occupation of every inhabitant, and carefully 
 keeping them to the right and diligent performance of their several 
 parts, that they may be able to render an account of their work when 
 
7 6 
 
 AFTER 
 
 the Lord shall come to call the work of every man into judgment. 
 This watchful, careful office appertaineth to the minister of the gospel 
 or the pastor of the souls of the people, in which, if he faithfully travel, 
 his shall be a great reward. But if he stoop to engage himself with 
 any of the diverse traffics, and, meanwhile, for want of careful oversight 
 and spiritual instruction, the souls committed to him go astray to serve 
 other masters than the Lord, their blood shall surely be upon his head. 
 Now, if the Lord our God hath taken to Himself a form in 
 the Scriptures for the instruction of man, and hath instructed each of 
 us in His station to take a form for the edification of one another, and 
 wherever His counsels are revered and obeyed, hath added the form of 
 a minister, who, standing aloof from the several engagements and their 
 temporal rewards, shall be His voice and messenger unto the people, 
 satisfied with the singular dignity thereof ; is it to be believed that He 
 should have appointed no outward form to those chief and leading men, 
 who were to carry abroad over the earth these celestial instructions, 
 and teach the nations to rule their character and set forth their works 
 after the will and pleasure of their heavenly Father ; that giving to all 
 others good and particular instructions, how they shall best and most 
 happily fill their station's, lie should leave the perilous apostles and 
 missionaries of the whole institution no instructions as to the form 
 which they should take, in order to move the nations and prevail on 
 them to return to their rightful fealty to the Most High ? This were to 
 build a ship, with occupations for a numerous crew, and berths provided 
 for many officers and men, but to make no provision how she should 
 ba launched into the deep : or, being launched into the deep, it were 
 to fill her with plentiful supplies to some distressed colony, and man 
 her with able hands, but make no provision of a skilful pilot and good 
 instructions to carry her through the strong currents and stormy winds 
 which set adverse to her course. The thing is not once to be imagined 
 of Him who is All-wise and All-provident, as well as All-good and 
 bountiful. A priori, before any appeal to the fact, it may be conclud- 
 
THE, APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. j~ 
 
 ed that the missionary, doubtless, will have his form, as well as the 
 people whom it is his calling to inform after the will of God. And his 
 form will be after the fashion of the minister or pastor, somewhat more 
 devout and adventurous, as the discoverer and subduer of a country 
 needeth to be more adventurous than he who keepeth it under regiment. 
 The one fearless, the other watchful ; the one expedite and ready for 
 all encounters, the other burdened with many charges ; the missionary 
 a spiritual warrior, the pastor a spiritual shepherd. 
 
 What this form of the missionary is, we have already gathered from 
 Messiah's own constitution of the missionary estate. But it will be a 
 great confirmation of the doctrine if we can shew that, from the very 
 nature of the Spirit's operation upon the heart of man, it must neces- 
 sarily follow that the missionary should be such a self-denied and world - 
 divested creature, and that he cannot come into a more full and suffi- 
 cient condition without incommoding himself and hindering his work ; 
 that it is the necessary form of his office, from which every deviation 
 must be lamented as a defect, and deliverance from it earnestly ensued 
 as an attainment of stature, and a step towards success. Also, that it 
 hath been, from the first of God's revelations to the last of them, the 
 form which the messengers He chose either assumed at the outset, or 
 came to in the end. Also, that the work hath not changed in these 
 times, that we should ignorantly conceit a change in the workman or 
 his tools to be expedient. Also, that this unworldly and extreme 
 character of the missionary is in perfect keeping with the other parts of 
 Christian discipline, of which no part can be levelled down to worldly 
 prudence and homely practice without loss to the Church and deception 
 of the world. And, therefore, that our true course in this and all other 
 Christian institutions, is to work our character up from worldly levels 
 into their pure elevations, assured that at every step we come into 
 nearer neighbourhood to the Divine Spirit, and a larger sphere of 
 blessing unto men. Such is the train of argument which this oration 
 
7 8 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 will take, in order to justify this form of the missionary, by shewing its 
 alliance and affinity with the rest of the Christian revelation. 
 
 It is the nature of man, fallen from truth, and alienated from the life 
 of godliness, diligently'to seek how he may bestow upon the creature, 
 and of all creatures upon himself, that \vorship and glory which is due 
 to God alone. His talents, though they be created and matured by 
 God ; his knowledge, though all that he knows be of God's providence 
 and handiwork ; his possessions, though they consist in a portion of 
 God's goods freely bestowed ; his bodily strength, his form, his very 
 name, that most airy anil accidental of all things, it is man's nature to 
 magnify into a god, and to 'worship as his chief good. And some will 
 fall prostrate before science ; and others before literature ; and others 
 before brute and senseless nature ; and others before idols of wood and 
 brass ; and, in short, there is nothing inherent in the nature of man, or 
 existent in the outward world, whereof the fallen soul hath not, at some 
 time and place, made an idol, and with which, in all times and places, 
 it hath not a tendency, less or more, to divide the reverence which is 
 due to God alone. So that the greatest impediment to the progress of 
 the gospel in the soul ariseth out of the things which are seen and tem- 
 poral, the world and the things of the world, which come to naught. 
 These occupy our senses, and thence steal into our affections, when the 
 imagination formeth them into more lively and wily combinations, and 
 the intellect busying itself with their relation, at every step of the 
 investigation discovereth them to be so wisely adapted to the wants of 
 man, so stimulative of a thousand pleasures of the sense, and so profit- 
 able to the ambition and enjoyment of the present world, that they 
 gain and gain over our time, our interests, our desires, our fears, until 
 at length there is left in the soul no room for the gospel to occupy. 
 All is prepossessed and preoccupied, when the gospel comes into action, 
 which hath therefore to begin its course by checking, cutting off, pro- 
 hibiting, rebuking, and the like distasteful operations, known generally 
 by the name of repentance. And after having brought these former 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 79 
 
 propensities to a stand, it seeks to drive them all backward ; to turn 
 the tide of bitter waters upon their evil fountain, and to recover the 
 fields of the soul which they had drowned and wasted from their right- 
 ful possessor. And in proportion as this work of emptying goeth on, 
 the work of the Spirit proceedeth, the dew of God's blessing descendeth 
 as upon the thirsty earth, and the fruits of the Spirit fill the former 
 waste places; the evil invaders are cast out, the turbulent possessors are 
 quieted, the lamb lieth down with the leopard, and the young lion and 
 the fatling together, and the desert of our spiritual state rejoiceth and 
 blossomcth like the rose. 
 
 If so it be found, in the experience of all Christians, that the things 
 of the Spirit prosper in proportion as the things of the flesh decay, and 
 that confidence in the right arm of Jehovah increaseth as our confidence 
 decrease! h in princes and the sons of men, in the corn, the wine, and 
 the oil ; and that allegiance unto Christ doth undo and dissolve the 
 allegiance of the human soul to Mammon, and Belial, and Satan, and 
 even to the dearest and nearest friendships and relations of life, it is 
 most manifest, that the disseminators of such a doctrine over the earth 
 must be denuded of all the things in which men place their trust, and 
 to which they render their homage, in order that they may be wholly 
 under the influence of that Spirit, worship, and allegiance, under which 
 they seek to reduce the rest of men. And these deprivations exacted 
 by our Lord, of those who go forth as the propagators of His spiritual 
 kingdom, are to be considered not only in the sense of tests or trials 
 imposed by llim, or of mortifications imposed by themselves, or of 
 examples offered to the people to whom they go, (though in all these 
 respects they may and do serve good ends,) but as the necessary and 
 indispensable condition to their being wholly under that very Spirit to 
 which they would persuade the world to be subject, and as sure evidence 
 that they continue under it so long as they love and submit to such a 
 discipline. Christ wished none but spiritual men to take this office 
 upon themselves ; and uf the spiritual men in the Church, lie wished 
 
g o MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 those who were strongest in faith, and those alone, to venture forth. 
 Therefore, He set the mark to the most unearthly standard, and ap- 
 pointed that there should be no purse, that is, rio pecuniary emolument; 
 no scrip, that is, no possessions; no change of raiment, that is, no 
 pleasures or accommodations of the body; no staff, that is, no ease or 
 pleasure of travel ; no salutations by the way, that is, no ends of natural 
 or social affection. Which He ordained, not because He was a hard 
 master, for He exacteth of no one to undertake the perilous yet glorious 
 work; but because, if any one would undertake it, He would not per- 
 mit him to be ignorant of the cost, but instructed him in the measure 
 of faith which was indispensable to the work ; saying to them, Unless 
 the things of the Spirit have prospered thus and thus far with thee, 
 unless the kingdom of heaven hath prevailed within thy soul, and sub- 
 jected all these regions of natural gladness, thou art not prepared for 
 the work; but if otherwise, then go thy ways, and, lo ! I am with thee 
 unto the end of the world. 
 
 If this argument, drawn of necessity from the nature of the Christian 
 spirit, be well founded, then it will follow that amongst those "who are 
 full of the Spirit, he who hath a purse is as he who hath none, and he 
 who hath a scrip as he who hath none, and he who hath a field as he 
 who hath none, and he who hath a kingdom as he who hath none. And 
 it confirmeth us the more in the soundness of the argument, that at 
 the great outpouring of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, this con- 
 dition of things was realised among the disciples, who had all things 
 in common, and sold their possessions, and poured out their price at 
 the apostles' feet. It will likewise follow, that a missionary, in propor- 
 tion as he is careful of these things, shews himself deficient in the 
 supply of that Spirit, whose chosen vessel he preferreth himself to be ; 
 and that no age of the Church which setteth store by these outward 
 visible means is greatly enlightened of the Spirit, but hath need to 
 seek for a more plentiful diffusion of His ghostly influences. It will 
 follow, moreover, from this fruitful proposition, that, though a mission- 
 
THK APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. #j 
 
 ary in the first instance should go forth stocked like a trader, fitted out 
 like a discoverer, accredited like a royal envoy, and three times armed 
 with prudence like a hostile spy, when he cometh into close commu- 
 nication with the Spirit of God and the spirit of the people, in order to 
 be the mediator between these natural enemies, he will, if his mind be 
 open to light, be taught the utter helplessness of all these helps, the 
 utter uselessness of all these useful things, to that work in which he 
 hath embarked : that though they may commend him to the proud and 
 worldly part of the people, and gain for him a place in their regards as 
 a man of some consequence and reputation, they are so far from bring- 
 ing him into contact with their spiritual feelings, which alone he careth 
 or ought to care for, that they set him more remote from thence, and 
 induce a mistake with respect to his unearthly purpose, which it will 
 require him much time and labour to correct. And if he be a true man, 
 and a man of spiritual discernment, I think that a transmutation will 
 speedily come upon the outward estate of this well-furnished missionary. 
 He will by degrees divest himself of all those things which withdraw 
 the people from the word of his mouth, or hinder them from apprehend- 
 ing the simplicity and sincerity of his spiritual purpose. He will adopt 
 their dresses, follow their manner of life, eat with them and drink with 
 them, and seek access to them at all their unguarded moments, that he 
 may be always at hand to drop his words seasonably into their ear, and 
 manifest constantly before their eye the influence of his faith over all 
 the conditions of man, instead of merely addressing them now and then 
 with set speeches and abstract discourses against the very time, form, 
 and place of which their minds are already in arms. And he will not 
 scruple to take favours at their hand, if that will bring him into closer 
 confidence of their souls, which it doth far more frequently than other- 
 wise ; and if not, he will work to them for his meat, teach them the arts 
 of his country, do anything that may bring him and keep him in close 
 and frequent contact with their personal affections : and he will learn 
 to be of no country, that he may remove political hindrances out of the 
 
AFTER 
 
 wa) r , and he \vill learn to carry no temptations about with h r m ; his 
 wealth, which maketh him to be envied, and perhaps endangereth his 
 life, he will cast into the first brook which he crosseth, or diligently 
 hide it from the people, (but how shall he hide it from his own heart !) 
 his equipage of travel he will put aside ; and, like Bernard Gilpin, the 
 Reformer of the North, he will give his- horse to the first poor family 
 which hath need of one to earn their bread; and, like that most noble 
 of parish priests, however full-handed the missionary may set out on 
 his expedition, he will, if his mind be open to light, and his heart to 
 love, return from his excursion, not only empty of all things, but be- 
 holden to the worthy men who had compassion upon him by the wa}\ 
 So that, according to the argument, the spirit which prevaileth within 
 the missionary's breast, will never fail to bring him into that very con- 
 dition of nakedness and dependence, I should rather say, fulness of 
 faith and spiritual plenty, which the great Counsellor and Founder of 
 the missionary cause, in the plenitude of His wisdom, ordained as the 
 proper condition, not to end with, but to set out with, in this faithful 
 and spiritu.il adventure. 
 
 It is not that we attach any importance to the outward costume of a 
 missionary, which also may be assumed. Under the coarse frock of 
 a friar lay oft more pride and cunning than beneath a cardinal's hat ; 
 and the triple crown hath not covered more ambitious purposes than 
 lay within the cowl of the Jesuit who exposed himself to every blast of 
 heaven. The pride of human nature may make noble-minded men to 
 dwell like Diogenes in a tub ; the disappointments of the world may 
 drive them like Timon to the woods ; and racking remorse may send 
 them unprovided pilgrims over untrodden deserts, or attach them to 
 the course fare and bare walls of a hermit's cell ; the forms of poverty 
 and meanness are endless, which the spirit of man may assume for its 
 own particular gratification, without any regard to the well-being of 
 others, or the propagation of the kingdom of Christ ; and therefore no 
 fjrm is to be taken as a sure test of the true spirit of a Christian 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 83 
 
 missionary. Nevertheless, as hath been proved above, there is a form 
 which, beyond others, is expressive of a heavenly mind and a 
 disinterested mission, that which Messiah chose for Himself when 
 coming into the world, and which He laid upon all who would 
 travail with him for the redemption of the world. It is not indispensable 
 to the true missionary spirit, but the true missionary spirit doth love 
 it, and cannot without self-denial be brought to lay it aside ; it is not 
 unequivocal to those without, but it is least liable to be misinterpreted ; 
 it is not a capital crime against the laws of the spiritual kingdom to lay 
 it aside for an occasion, as it is not a capital crime against our naval 
 laws for a captain to lose his ship, but as in the latter case so in the 
 former, he ought to be put upon his trial, and make appear before the 
 statutes of our king, that it was for the best interests of the kingdom 
 that it was set aside. 
 
 Such is the argument drawn from the necessary laws of spiritual 
 influence ; and such are the consequences of the argument : but what 
 saith the fact ? The fact saith this, that by men, so conditioned as 
 these instructions set forth, God hath always wrought enlargement or 
 salvation to His spiritual kingdom. Joseph, by whom He saved the 
 promised seed, and got for them the land of Goshen, was first stripped 
 of everything, father and mother, and brotherly love, made a bondsman, 
 beleaguered with temptation, falsely accused and imprisoned, friendless 
 and helpless in the dungeons of a foreign land. And when, the people 
 being lost to the knowledge of God and the nobility of their calling, 
 the orphan shepherd Moses was chosen for the great work of setting 
 them free, and receiving the law from the mouth of the Lord, he 
 argued three times his unfitness for the work, first, from Pharaoh's 
 strong and high condition ; secondly, from the unbelief of the people ; 
 and, lastly, from his own meanness and want of eloquence. But the 
 Lord gave him no appointments under heaven save his shepherd's rod. 
 Elijah, who was called on at another similar pass, when the people had 
 with one accord fallen away under idolatry and tyranny, had not a 
 
8 4 
 
 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 house or a morsel of meat or a friend within the bounds of Israel to 
 give him shelter ; yet the Lord by his hand slew all the priests of Baal, 
 and overthrew their altars in the high places. And Elisha, on whom 
 his mantle fell, and with it his perilous work, that same day he received 
 his commission to go forth to the Lord's work, sacrificed his oxen, and 
 made the fire for the sacrifice out of the wood of his agricultural 
 implements, cutting asunder all connexion with the world, and destroy- 
 ing that which won his bread, devoting the instruments of his wealth 
 in thanksgiving to the Lord, who had called him to the work of a 
 higher husbandry, And David, from feeding the sheep, by neither 
 chariot nor horsemen, won favour in the sight of Israel, and was 
 advanced to the throne. And Esther, an orphan woman, saved the 
 people of the Lord from utter ruin. And all the prophets were without 
 reputation or worldly condition, otherwise they had been unfit for their 
 perilous work : Amos, from among the herdsmen of Tekoah, Ezekiel, 
 from the captives by the rivers of Chebar, Daniel and the three children 
 from menial offices in the palace of an Eastern king. And whosoever 
 else, under the former dispensation, was separated as a chosen vessel 
 for containing the revelation, and doing the work of the Lord, was 
 either ill-conditioned by birth, evil-starred of fortune, or stripped naked 
 by the world, made a Nazarite of, separated by the Lord unto Himself, 
 before he could be entered to the work of doing great and lasting service 
 to the interests of righteousness. And John the Baptist, the forerunner 
 of Christ, who may be reckoned the great type of missionaries, if Christ 
 be the great type of shepherds or pastors, (for the missionary prepareth 
 the way for the pastor, as the Baptist did for Christ,) was made a 
 Nazarite from his mother's womb ; that is, he was separated from strong 
 drink, which representeth all artificial stimulants of the spirit and 
 luxuries of the body; and a razor was not permitted to come upon his 
 head, which meaneth that he was separated from all outward show and 
 ornament ; and thus being hindered from regarding his own gratifica- 
 tion and the world's eye, he was come into a condition for receiving 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. gr 
 
 the inspirations of the Spirit of God, which cannot enter into commu- 
 nion with sense and selfishness, those two great idols of men. And 
 Christ himself, though He was in the form of God, and thought it not 
 robbery to be equal with God, made Himself of no reputation, and 
 took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of 
 man ; and being found in fashion as a man, humbled Himself, and 
 became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore 
 God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name above every 
 name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
 heaven and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every 
 tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
 the Father. Thus making Himself both a model and a history of 
 every one who is to extend that kingdom which He founded, and labour 
 in the salvation which He purchased. And, finally, what the twelve 
 and seventy were, and how they were fitted out for their work, w 7 e have 
 spent the former head of this discourse in explaining. And what the 
 people were who first received their message, and in their several 
 neighbourhoods propagated the kingdom, Paul hath told in the 
 Corinthians, "Brethren, ye see your calling, how that not many wise 
 men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. 
 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the 
 wise, and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound 
 the things which are mighty, and base things of the world, and things 
 which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to 
 bring to nought things that are." 
 
 What more, then, is required to shew that there ever must be, and 
 ever hath been, a necessity for disjunction from the works of the world 
 in order to work the works of God ; that the great heralds of Heaven 
 must take a stand above the earth, in order to raise men above the 
 earth ; that they must undervalue those things which they teach men 
 to undervalue ? What are missionaries but the prophets' order enlarged 
 from the confines of the land of Israel, to roam at large over the world? 
 
86 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 God's messengers to the nations, telling them their several burdens if 
 they repent not, and shewing them salvation if they repent. Each a 
 Jonah to the several quarters of the heathen world : not servants of 
 this or that association of men, but heralds of Heaven, who dare not 
 be under other orders than the orders of Christ. It is a presumption 
 hardly short of Papal, to command them. They are not missionaries 
 when they are commanded. They are creatures of the power that 
 commandeth them. Up, up with the stature of this character : it is 
 high as heaven : its head is above the clouds which hide the face of 
 heaven from earth-born men : its ear heareth the word of God con- 
 tinually, and continually re-echoeth what it heareth to the nations. 
 The missionary is the hollow of that trump which resoundeth the voice 
 of God. Let us reverence him, he is above us all, he is above the 
 world, he is an ethereal being, and careth not for the concerns of time. 
 I wonder how any one can be so impious towards God, so cruel towards 
 men, as to wish to obliterate one feature of his celestial character. 
 Though none of those who at present respectably bear the honours of 
 the name come near to it, still let it stand, that, being ever in their 
 eye, they may approach it more and more near. Though none of this 
 generation can bear the palm of it away, some of our children may. 
 And though none of our children should reach it nearer than their 
 fathers, some of our children's children may. Some favoured one may 
 be raised up of God, who, like another Paul, may give it full and com- 
 plete vitality. And when he shall arrive, rest assured that, like another 
 Paul, he will convert half the nations. For w r ell am I convinced that 
 the gospel waiteth only for such spiritual men, in order to burst its 
 present narrow bounds, and the Spirit waiteth only for these necessary 
 conditions to fill the inward soul of any man, and make him a chosen 
 vessel, a royal stately ship to sail in all seas, and bear the treasure unto 
 all lands. I feel, that in pleading for the perpetuity of the missionary 
 form of manhood, I am pleading the cause, not only of the unconverted 
 nations, but the cause of Divine power and truth, which is hindered 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. gy 
 
 from descending to tabernacle with mortals only by our low-thoughted 
 cares and worldly occupations. Martha, who was burdened with many 
 things, is the genius of the human race ; Mary, who had chosen the 
 one thing needful, is the genius of the missionary band, who, not out 
 of the greatness of their grief, but the greatness of their love have be- 
 come careless of all those things, save that good part which shall not 
 be taken from them. 
 
 Who is he that talks of change ? The missionary ordinance can 
 never change, for the missionary work doth never change. His work 
 is still to overthrow the prince of this world, seated upon the beauty 
 and pleasantness, upon the magnificence and glory of the visible 
 creation, and to deliver the souls of men into the worship of the invi- 
 sible God. Kingdoms may undergo every vicissitude, and be found 
 under every form of civil polity ; nations may exist in every degree of 
 culture or barbarism ; they may be noble, high minded and proud ; 
 sordid, base, and given over to gain and sensual indulgence ; vain- 
 glorious, pompous, and fond of a thousand spectacles ; they may be 
 grovelling in superstition, sunk in ignorance, abandoned to sloth and 
 effeminacy, or fierce, fiery, and uncontrollable ; but never will a king- 
 dom or nation be found possessed of the knowledge of the true God, 
 devoted to the faith and pursuit of spiritual objects, or living in the 
 practice of Christian precepts. The maxims, the spirit of the laws and 
 policy, the motives and principles of private conduct, the whole tenor 
 of their society, and influence of their religion, have to be counteracted 
 and overthrown in these times, as entirely as in the days of the apostles. 
 There is no relaxation of the oppositions, there is no mitigation of the 
 difficulties of the work, which never changeth. And the gospel which 
 the missionary hath to preach, the kingdom which he hath to propa- 
 gate, is still the same spiritual kingdom which flesh and blood cannot 
 inherit, whose King hath no communion with Belial nor with Mammon, 
 in whose sight iniquity cannot stand,, and to whom the proud heart 
 and the high look are an abomination. This gospel, which hath 
 
gg MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 toleration for no natural form of humanity however excellent, and 
 condemneth every living man, which bcginneth in sorrow and repen- 
 tance for the past, proceedeth by the faith and preference of things 
 unseen, and is perfected in a thousand acts of self-denial and self- 
 discipline, is not now more agreeable to the nations than it was when 
 first revealed by our Lord and Saviour. And if the gospel, after two 
 thousand years, is still as unaccommodating to the world, and the world 
 is still by nature as averse from its faith and discipline, how should 
 the manner of its propagation be altered in any respect from what was 
 laid down and followed at the first ? If the first missionaries were 
 made spiritual personages, in order to exhibit practically to the people 
 that preference and all-sufficiency of spiritual things which they 
 preached ; if they were men of faith alone, in order to exhibit that 
 principle which they sought to magnify over sight and sense, why 
 should they not be so likewise in these times, in which the heathen are 
 still as devoted to things seen and temporal, as they were in the days of 
 Paul ? Even supposing the present missionaries had more divinity of 
 nature than the apostles, and that they could possess purse, scrip, and 
 all other accommodations without being thereby unspiritualised, how 
 shall they hinder the evil interpretation of the heathen, who see them 
 hired, paid, accommodated, befriended, and in all outward things better 
 conditioned than themselves ? They speak to us of faith ; let them 
 shew us their own. They speak to us of the providence of God ; but 
 they ventured not hither without every security. They tell us of 
 Christ's disinterestedness to us ; but what lessons give they us of the 
 same ? And so forth through every particular of their condition, by 
 which Christ intended that they should evidence the doctrine which 
 they taught. I cannot understand, therefore, in any way, how the 
 condition of the missionary work should be changed, when the work 
 itself remaineth the same ; or how the instruction which Christ gave 
 for the propagation of His kingdom should now be null and void, 
 when it is the same kingdom that is to be propagated, and the difficul- 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 8 9 
 
 ties and impediments are still the same, over the head of which its 
 propagation is to be effected. 
 
 I admire the steadiness with which the spiritual people of this day 
 have stood out against the ignorant clamour, that the heathen must be 
 civilised before they can be Christianised; I admire, also, the faith 
 which they have shewn in the power of God, to save men by the preach- 
 ing of the word, without any help of the arts of government or of civil 
 life ; and the simplicity with W'hich they devote themselves to the cir- 
 culation of the Scriptures, and the sending out of teachers and preach- 
 ers ; and they are never enough to be commended for standing aloof 
 from the employment of force, and power, and civil policy; in all these 
 respects, fulfilling the maxim of Christ, "My kingdom is not of this 
 world." But there are a few things which still savour of the spirit of 
 the world, and which must be put aw- ay by the diligent perusal and 
 faithful execution of this the missionary charter; which, instead of 
 arguing against or pulling down, they should regard as the everlasting 
 conditions of the missionary work, within which men have only to come 
 in order to be ready for the high office, and ripe for scattering the ever- 
 lasting seed amongst the nations. There hath been much searching of 
 the Scriptures for a platform of church government, and every passage 
 which can be forced into that application, has been strained to the 
 utmost, in order that a jus divinum might be made out for Episcopacy, 
 Presbytery, and Independency in their turns. Sure I am that none, 
 nor all of these put together, can make out such a divine right as the 
 missionary work hath in these instructions of our Lord; and had there 
 been human interests concerned in the establishment of it, as human 
 interests there are none, unspiritual men would long ere this have used 
 it tor securing them ; but being the death of secularity, the essence of 
 spiritual mindedness, and the quintessence of self-denial, I perceive 
 that it hath everything to contend with, scoffs, ridicule, and worldly 
 wisdom, and cannot be generally acceptable in times when the secular 
 and the spiritual have become strangely intermingled, and maxims cur- 
 
OQ MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 rent on the exchange have become current in holy places, when the 
 offices of the Church have come to be valued by their emoluments, and 
 for their emoluments sought out, and as an emolument discoursed of 
 amongst the people. It is not now the time to discourse of the pastoral 
 office, (I shall hereafter,) but it were easy to shew from the epistles of 
 the great Shepherd to the angels of the seven churches of Asia, that it 
 is an office in its spirit, consenting with that view of the missionary 
 office which we labour to establish, and widely dissenting from those 
 views of it which are now current amongst both priests and people. 
 But while those erroneous views prevail of the pastoral office, which is- 
 under our eye at home, and from which we derive our notion of the 
 missionary, it will be in vain to think that the latter notion can be a 
 correct one. Therefore, it is the more necessary, among the many 
 sources of error to which we are exposed in making up our idea of the 
 missionary, to adhere to the Divine platform contained in these verses, 
 and be governed by the jus dhrinum, the Divine authority of that 
 unrepealed constitution. 
 
 Therefore I say, let this type of the missionary stand, that he is a 
 man without a purse, without a scrip, without a change of raiment, 
 without a staff, without the care of making friends or keeping friends, 
 without the hope or desire of worldly good, without the apprehension 
 of worldly loss, without the care of life, without the fear of death ; of 
 no rank, of no country, of no condition ; a man of one thought, the 
 gospel of Christ ; a man of one purpose, the glory of God ; a 
 fool, and content to be reckoned a fool, for Christ ; a madman, and 
 content to be reckoned a madman, for Christ. Let him be enthusiast, 
 fanatic, babbler, or any other outlandish nondescript the world may 
 choose to denominate him. But still let him be a nondescript, a man 
 that cannot be classed under any of their categories, or defined by any 
 of their convenient and conventional names. When they can call him 
 pensioner, trader, householder, citizen ; man of substance, man of the 
 world, man of science, man of learning, or even man of common sense, 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. gj 
 
 it is all over with his missionary character. He may innocently have 
 some of these forms of character, some of them he cannot innocently 
 have ; but they will be far subordinate, deep in the shade, covered and 
 extinguished to the world's incurious gaze, by the strange incoherent 
 and unaccountable character to which he surrendereth himself mainly. 
 The world knoweth the missionary not, because it knew Messiah not. 
 The nature of his life is hid with Christ in God ; he is not a man, but 
 the spirit of a man ; he is a spirit that hath divested itself of all 
 earthiness, save the continent body, which it keepeth down and useth 
 as its tabernacle, and its vehicle, and its mechanical tool for speech and 
 for action. 
 
 The standard is a high one, and suiteth not an easy and prudential 
 age, and we that are bred in peaceful places may stumble at it, and 
 some of our self-sufficient spirits may scoff at it. But our fathers held 
 it in reputation when they suffered the loss of all things, and counted 
 them but as dung, that they might win Christ ; and the missionaries 
 who came to our fathers were accustomed to it. And what is a mis- 
 sionary who shrinketh at it ? Can he stand the stake or the cross who 
 cannot bear hunger, thirst, and nakedness ? Was any man a martyr 
 who could not be a hungered for Christ ! What are purse, staff, scrip, 
 raiment, and friendship, but the help and sustenance of life, taking 
 their value from the love we have of life ? And if we are prepared to 
 scuttle the ship, are \ve not prepirecl to sink the timbers, and cordage, 
 and tackle of the ship? This unearthly dimension of the missionary 
 character is in such keeping w r ith the rest of the Christian dispensation, 
 as to commend itself to our mind on that very account. Had it. not 
 been perfect in this its beau-ideal, had it been accommodated to pru- 
 dence and practice, a plausible, reasonable, fair-looking speculation 
 like that which it seems hasting to become, I for one would have said, 
 This is not like a character of Christ's delineation ; it wanteth the 
 touch of the Divine hand ; it hath not the supernatural air. It is of 
 the earth,- earthly : it is not of the heavens, heavenly : it is born of 
 
Q 2 MISSIONARIES AFT&R 
 
 flesh, it consorteth with Mammon and hath fellowship with Belial. I 
 doubt whether it be an original or not ; for here, in Christ's style, is a 
 description of faith as the substance of things hoped for ; and here is a 
 cloud of witnesses, who by faith substantiated invisible things ; and 
 here is a description of the Christian life, as a walk by faith and not by 
 sight ; and here is a description of chanty so perfect as to make the 
 holiest man abhor himself ; and here is a law with condemneth the 
 justest men ; and here is a rule of chastity, and a rule for behaving to 
 enemies, and a rule for almsgiving, and a thousand other schemes and 
 rules of Christ ; not one of which is calculated in accommodation to 
 man's imperfections, but in accommodation to God's perfections ; not 
 in measure with man's weakness, but in measure with the Spirit's 
 power ; not for the strength of fallen nature, but for the sufficiency of 
 the grace of God. And shall the individual traits of the Christian 
 character be superhuman, and the whole Christian not be superhuman; 
 shall the Christian be superhuman, and the missionary not be three 
 times superhuman ? 
 
 Stumble, therefore, who pleaseth at the severity of these institutions 
 of the missionary ; I glory in them. Tame them down who pleaseth ; 
 I, while I live, will uphold their sublimity. Temporise with them who 
 please, they do it at their proper risk. Let it be mine to love and re- 
 verence my Saviour's words. Nay, moreover, let them who please cool 
 down the temper of the missionary, and lower the mark of his high 
 calling; be it mine to rouse his spirit, and if duty hindered not, to 
 rouse my own spirit to the height of the undertaking. When the 
 missionaries, the forlorn hope of our warfare, issue from the gate of 
 our camp, let us cheer them with songs of ancient chivalry, with ex- 
 amples of ancient victory; let the daughter of Zion brace the heart of 
 her warlike sons, with her heaven-derived minstrelsy; that they may go 
 forth in the spirit of the mighty men of old, and scale the steep which 
 frowneth upon flesh and blood, and plant the good standard of the faith 
 upon the loftiest battlement of the enemy's strongest hold, which, 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 93 
 
 strong and lofty though it be, is not more strong than the strength of 
 our God, nor more lofty than the flights of our faith, which, strong 
 and lofty though it be, is permitted thus high to rise and thus sternly 
 frown, only that it may prove the good temper of the warrior's soul, 
 and prove before the high witnesses of the contest how humanity 
 in the weakest of Christ's servants is stronger than death and 
 the grave, than earth and hell, and can triumph over them, 
 and lead them captives, as did the great Founder and ever- 
 lasting Captain of the missionary work. Therefore, I say, let 
 the lineament of perfection stand flaming forth, because it is the 
 failing of human nature to rest satisfied with its attainments, and to 
 come to a stand in its progress, through the might and multitude of 
 surrounding objects. Unto feeble and faithless man, there needeth 
 always a voice like to that which was given unto Moses when the peo- 
 ple, pressed between the angry sword of Pharaoh and the raging sea, 
 stood still in sore dismay: "Speak unto the children of Israel that 
 they go forward." And of all men, the missionary needeth this voice 
 the most, because his course is the roughest, and his enemies the most 
 inveterate. As the Baptist came in the desert, so he cometh in the 
 moral wilderness and spiritual desert of human life ; and though he be 
 nothing but a voice, he crieth out, "Prepare the way of the Lord, make 
 his paths straight, let every valley be filled, and every mountain and 
 hill be brought low, let the crooked be made straight, and the rough 
 places be made smooth." Such a one shall have in his teeth a phalanx 
 of opposition, and he hath need of a heart like a lion's heart, and of a 
 wing like an eagle's wing, and there must be upon his banner, Forward, 
 Forward ; and that he may never faint or fail, his banner should be this 
 divine portrait of a perfect missionary, this safe-conduct and assurance 
 of ultimate success, to flame over the darkness of his path, like the 
 pillar of fire which directed Israel in the watches of the night. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 From the Missionary Doctrine. 
 
 WHILE I contend with all my might that the portraiture of the 
 missionary given by Messiah, with His instructions for^the 
 perilous voyage, should not be hid from the sight and study of the 
 Church, but live in its few grand and simple lineaments, untouched by 
 any mortal hand, and unsoftened by the compromising taste of any age; 
 and that every one who looks to this, the highest preferment in the 
 kingdom of Christ, should be qualified according to the testament of 
 our King, over which testament the Church is the guardian to execute 
 it faithfully, not to enlarge or abridge it in one jot or tittle : I am far 
 from intending, as the conclusion of the whole matter, that no one shall 
 make trial and experiment of this service until he feel the image of 
 Messiah perfected in his soul, or that God will withhold His blessing 
 from the rude beginnings and mistrustful setting-out, of this high and 
 holy calling. As God doth know, and my conscience beareth me 
 witness, it is not to discourage or repel any spirit which feels stirred to 
 attempt the undertaking, but to encourage and attract all Christian 
 spirits by its ethereal excellence and transcendent glory, that I would 
 preserve the standard perfection of this character unreduced and un- 
 veiled before every eye. And if any one think that by the opposite 
 course of reducing its lofty dimensions, or veiling its heavenly purity, 
 he will recommend this or any other part of the Christian system to the 
 world, he doth err, nothing knowing the end of Christianity, or the 
 nature of the world. By doing so, he shall but place the world on 
 good terms with itself, and mislead still further its false estimation of its 
 uwn wretched conditions, while he prostitutes the great boon of heaven, 
 
APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. <s - 
 
 which was given not to please the deluded world, but to redeem it out 
 of its present self-satisfaction and self-complacency. The world is to be 
 undeceived with respect to all its ideas of greatness and goodness, its 
 heroism to be despoiled, its virtues put to shame, its boast and glory 
 mocked, by the new school of character and action which the gospel 
 introduceth, in order to cast all its conditions into the shade, and force 
 them to confess that they are nothing. The divine stature and heavenly 
 majesty, the unstained purity and tender mercy, and the self-divested, 
 self-devoted disinterestedness of the new man, created in the image of 
 God, are intended to silence the empty boastfulness of the old man, to 
 call forth spiritual faculties from their hiding-places of ease and selfish- 
 ness, and to offer a wisdom and righteousness, an honour and glory of 
 another kind than that whereof nature is ambitious, and wherewithal 
 she is content. It is not by indulging nature, therefore, in her false 
 judgments and depraved tastes, but by rebuking\vx, by exhibiting ideas 
 and forms of higher things, that she is to be led onward to perfection. 
 Her own self-love will draw the standard down, without any help on 
 your part, and in spite of all your endeavours the other way. Your 
 office, therefore, is to propound to her no second edition of the things 
 revealed from heaven for her regeneration, but the very things, if you 
 would humble her, beat her out of her proud refuges, prostrate her in 
 sorrow and repentance, and bring her to be an earnest suitor for the 
 sufficient grace and perfect strength of God. And he who shrinks 
 from the perusal of these new forms of character, because they are too 
 high for him, and cannot 1 e entered into at one attempt, and would 
 therefore have them lowered, doth err no less, than he doth who, to 
 serve his error, would bring them down to his low desire or faithless 
 timidity. For it is wholly to misstate the nature of his holy operation, 
 to imagine that it is finished at oneyfa/ as creation was at first, and 
 that the child of God starteth at once into being and perfect manhood. 
 We grow in grace as WP grow in nature, from the new birth, through 
 the helplessness of bubes, the weakness of childhgod, the instability of 
 
96 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 youth to the maturity of perfect men in Christ. And it is by exercise 
 we grow r , for the grace of God is a vital principle which begetteth life 
 and action. By this new life and action of the soul's faculties, we do 
 both discern the presence of that grace which we have received, and 
 our need of more, which we receive in clue time after we have proved 
 ourselves faithful over the few things already committed to our trust. 
 And so we go on from grace to grace, and from strength to strength, 
 by diligently occupying that which we have, and fulfilling those duties 
 which are meet to our present infirmity. Therefore, the prefections of 
 holiness presented in Scripture, and the sublimities of character exem- 
 plified by Christ, ought to be constantly kept full in our view that we 
 may know what the Lord our God requireth of us, and how far we 
 come short of His glory ; whence are fed the fountains of our penitence 
 and humility, at which prayer refresheth her too feeble voice, and the 
 Lord hearing her refreshed voice, supplieth all our wants in due season, 
 out of His inexhaustible fulness. And thus, in a circle, from the idea 
 of perfection, to the conciousness of weakness, and from the conscious- 
 ness of weakness, to the increase of strength, and from the increase of 
 strength, to the increase of performance, and from the increase of per- 
 formance, to the idea of still higher perfection, we approach more and 
 more near to that purity of holiness and sublimity of character, without 
 the knowledge and perusal of which we should not have known our 
 deficiency, and not knowing our deficiency, not have besought for 
 higher aid, and not beseeching the aid of Heaven, should not have 
 received the grace which is sufficient for us, and the strength which is 
 perfected in weakness. 
 
 If such be the progression of the Christian graces, it is most manifest 
 that whosoever can recover a true Christian idea from the corrupting 
 hand and compromising spirit of his age, and give it to the world in 
 its original form and beauty, doth serve the best interests of his age, 
 though he may somewhat trouble its present self-sufficiency. For 
 though he dg rebuke the imperfect measures with which the over-easy 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 97 
 
 times are satisfied, and turn against himself the zeal which he 
 disturbeth in its well-meant but ill-informed courses, he doth open 
 to all candid and truth-loving spirits a higher region, to which 
 they m.iy cast their longings, and for the occupation of which 
 they may weary Heaven with their humble prayers. And if any 
 one, in the couch of his contentment, should feel himself rebuked of 
 listless, self-satisfied ease, he ought, while he plucketh up his pilgrim's 
 staff, and manfully addresseth himself to another stage of his progress, 
 give thanks unto God who sent a messenger to rouse his spirit afresh, 
 and shew him the way to new enjoyments and new entertainments of 
 his spiritual life. 
 
 If, therefore, in the idea of the missionary, which we have sketched 
 in the first of these orations, and which in the two latter we have 
 sought to fix and make lasting by many fiery ordeals, there be anything 
 more enlarged and elevated than that which at present prevailethin the 
 Church; the use to which it should.be put, after it hath been first 
 tried by nonconforming truth, is to rouse the spirit of missionaries to 
 still higher aims, to whet the present zeal of the Christ to a still finer 
 edge, and to set on fire whatever is noble and generous and devoted in 
 the breasts of godly men. It were totally to misuse the truth, and to 
 misunderstand the whole economy of grace, for any one to take offence 
 at the height and purity of the character delineated above, or to withdraw 
 his shoulder from the missionary work, because the work turneth out to be 
 a more stiff-necked work than he had at first conceived. For, as it is the 
 perfect purity of the law which slays our self-sufficiency, arouseth our 
 dormancy, and, like a good schoolmaster, forceth our childish reluctancy 
 to betake itself to Christ for help ; so is it the nobleness of the mis- 
 sionary character, its independence of all natural means, and indiffer- 
 ence to all human patronage, its carelessness of all earthly rewards, and 
 contempt of the arithmetic of visible and temporal things, which force 
 the man who would essay it, to pass out of those resources human nature 
 fostereth within herself, and have his refuge and dependence upon the 
 
9 8 
 
 MISSION A RIES A FTER 
 
 Spirit of God, for sustenance, for patronage, for reward, and for a rule 
 of procedure. And after all he can do in this kind, it will still be the 
 complaint of every good and faithful missionary, that he hath not been 
 able to eradicate self-confidence, that root of bitterness which poisons 
 spiritual health, and brings on a prostration of spiritual strength. So 
 that these deprivations of Christ are but incumbrances kindly removed, 
 weights cast away, and besetting sins (sins th.it beset every man) 
 warned away from the missionary, in consideration of the ard-ttous race 
 which he hath undertaken to run. 
 
 Seeing, then that every Christian grace hath its slenderest begin- 
 nings, as well as its ultimate attainments, it is to be inferred that the 
 missionary is not perfected without use, nor by one effort of faith 
 carried to so great a height above sublunary things. We are toll of 
 the mighty Nazarite, under the former dispensation, that "the Spirit 
 of the Lord began to move him at times in the camp of Dan, between 
 Zorah and Ashtaol." So when the Spirit of the Lord begins to move 
 the Gospel-Nazarite, though it be in his native village, his native 
 town, or his father's house, let him obey its movements, and not 
 quench them, but follow onwards at their bidding. And even in 
 this, the infancy of his calling, he will find it needful to renounce 
 the approbation of the world, perhaps the affection of his friends, 
 certainly his own ease and natural pleasure, with many other things 
 dearer to life than a meal of meat or change of raiment. And as he 
 obeys the Divine voice which speaks within his soul for the salvation 
 of men, and encounters the strokes of their undiscerning blindness to 
 that which is spiritual, he will experience so much support of the 
 Spirit, such inward joy and satisfaction, that his faith will gather 
 courage, and spread its wings abroad, beyond the confines of his 
 father's house, his native village, or his native town. He will grow 
 FO full of faith, and contemplative of things unseen, as to forget his 
 trust in sight, and dependence upon things that are. Inward assurances 
 of God's direction will become so strong, the monitions of His Spirit 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. gg 
 
 so audible, the commands of Christ to go forth unto all nations 
 so imprinted in fire upon his heart, and invocations from the perishing 
 souls of the heathen will wax so loud and frequent in his ear, and 
 his whole inward man become so restless anJ aroused, that he will 
 have no peace till he arise and go forth. This strength of faith hath 
 a beginning in the soul like the grains of a mustard seed, which being 
 crushed or neglected in the embryo, will never grow to the largest 
 tree of the forest, in whose branches the birds of the air build their 
 nests, and under whose boughs the beasts of the field have their 
 habitations. The word of God at first is a spark, then it is a burning 
 coal, at length it is a consuming fire w r ithin the hearts of His servants, 
 and they are weary of forbearing, and they cannot stay nor hold their 
 peace; they must speak or they must die, and though they should die 
 they will speak; then have they no rest, but hasten over land and over 
 sea, over rocks and trackless deserts; they cry aloud and spare not, and 
 will not be hindered; in the prisons they lift up their voices, and in the 
 tempests of the ocean they are not silent ; before awful councils and 
 throned kings, they witness in behalf of the truth ; nothing will quench 
 their voice but death, and in the article of death, ere yet the spiry 
 flame and rolling smoke have suffocated the organs of the soul, they 
 speak, they pray, they testify, they confess, they beseech, they warn, 
 and at length they bless the cruel people. But to arrive at this supre- 
 macy of human nature, the perfection of the missionary, that most per- 
 fect form of manhood, many degrees must be passed through and much 
 discipline endured. These high graces are of gradual progress, not 
 attained without hard and patient trials, which are to be had in the 
 missionary field, not out of it. Therefore it is expedient, for the very 
 attainment of perfection, that the missionary should make proof of 
 what faith and spiritual strength he is already possessed, in order that, 
 being found worthy, he may have an increase of talents from the 
 Master of the House. To take the spolia opima of the war, he must be 
 inured to every adventure and address in arms. And, therefore, with 
 
100 
 
 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 \vhat zeal I discover and set forth the form of the high calling, and urge 
 the souls of missionaries to read it, with that zeal also I urge them to 
 ever}- step by which it is to be reached, looking not at what is behind, as 
 if they had already attained or were already perfect, but looking to the 
 things which are still before, and pressing onward to the mark. 
 
 And whether the blessing of God will be vouchsafed_toj;he lower 
 degrees of this majestic character, no one can doubt who knoweth 
 anything of His revelations, which are not for the perfect, .but that we 
 may grow up to the stature of the perfect. He blesseth the humblest 
 effort to advance: He rewardeth the smallest measure of attainment. 
 The very thought and imagination of good He blesseth with an inward 
 satisfaction of the soul. . Nay, even sorrow and penitence for evil 
 committed, and the relaxation of wickedness before any contrary move- 
 ment hath been made, He regardeth with approbation, and rewardeth 
 with a certain dawn of hope and foretaste of peace. And of all His 
 revelations this is the spirit: that He is the origin, the promoter, and 
 the strength of every good thought within our 'breast, and of every 
 good cause which hath an existence in the world, or is yet to be brought 
 into being. Therefore, at home or abroad, whoever out of a pure 
 heart seeketh to promote the gospel of Christ, which is the world's 
 redemption and salvation, may rely upon a blessing; and the more 
 pure his intention, the more will it be approved of God ; and the more 
 spiritual his means and instruments, the more speed will he come ; and 
 when his whole heart, strength, soul, and mind, are brought over from 
 resting upon the visible to rest upon the invisible helps, then his horn 
 shall be exalted, and the full measure of the Lord's blessing poured 
 out upon his handiwork. 
 
 Though God hath appointed to the minister at the altar, no more 
 provision than that he shall live by the altar at which he ministers, He 
 refuseth not to bless the pious labours of the bishop who owneth a 
 palace, and is dignified with the title of lord. Though He hath in- 
 terdicted His disciples from dignities, He doth not therefore blight or 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. T01 
 
 wither the pious labours of the archbishop who hath precedency of all 
 dignitaries except those of the royal blood. Nevertheless, His ordin- 
 ance of the pastoral office standeth sure ; and in proportion as it is 
 delivered out of these unfavourable conditions of rank and riches, 
 prospered! the more. So with the missionary. The good missionary 
 may take his own wisdom for his guide, and furnish himself with 
 all natural resources, and depend upon the patronage of man, rejecting 
 those eternal instructions by which he ought to be guided, and God 
 will not fail to bless him according to the measure of his faith and 
 zeal. Nevertheless, be it known unto him, that he cannot have the 
 full horn of His blessing, until he shew more dutifulness, and trust 
 in his Father; more resemblance to Messiah, his great ensample. It 
 is well that he hath gone out to the battle, but it is not well 
 that he hath gone out armed not according to the nature of the service. 
 It is well that he hath arrayed himself upon the right side, yet not well 
 that he hath so many open rivets in his armour. He hath clone well 
 to land upon the shores of the enemy, for the emancipation of which 
 he is to. contend, but it is cowardly that he hath all things so well pre- 
 pared for retreat. He should have burnt his ships and cast the scab- 
 bard of his sword away, and trusted in the goodness of his cause, 
 his Leader's good conduct, sufficient wisdom, and all-conquering 
 power. 
 
 Therefore, it is not to be inferred that these instructions preclude 
 any one from going in the way or manner he pleaseth ; they do but 
 inform all which is the right way and manner: neither is it to be in- 
 ferred that because God hath blessed with partial success other ways 
 of going forth, that they are therefore sanctioned as of eqnal authority 
 with this which is written in His word. I think the lame and partial 
 success which hath attended modern missions in the way of conversion, 
 compared with those of former times, should have humbled us to revise 
 the principles upon which we have proceeded, and see whether there 
 be not a large mixture of human wisdom and creature-trust in our 
 
j O 2 MISSIONARIES AFTER 
 
 measures. But it is not yet time to enter into the proper office and duty 
 of a missionary society, which is surely not infallible, but liable to be 
 canvassed, judged, and, if need be, censured and rebuked by Christian 
 judgments. This will come in a more advanced part of our discourse ; 
 and the subject which should now come to our hand is^-ta justify and 
 recommend the practice ofthis missionary constitution, which we have 
 drawn from the words of Messiah, and defended from the attempts of 
 temporising men to annul it, and so deprive the Church of what m:iy 
 be termed the principles of her foreign policy. 
 
 When I shall come to justify the wisdom and commend the practice 
 ofthis self-denying missionary ordinance, I Avill not stoop so low from 
 the high dignity of the subject, as to notice the sneers and sarcasms 
 and disappointed speeches with which the sensual man, and those 
 spiritual men in whom the sensual man still struggles for the ascen- 
 dency, will assail the principle of no scrip, no provisions, no accom- 
 modations for the journey, no stately deputations to the authorities of 
 the place, no travelling charges, nor any of all the other fat and 
 convenient things, which are now held almost as indispensable to the 
 carrying on of a rel'gious work, as heretofore they were to a county 
 canvass, a judicial assize, or a parliamentary commission to inspect the 
 condition of the realm. Those who have accustomed themselves to 
 carpet warfare, cannot like the conflict of naked steel ; those who have 
 rejoiced in the countenance of a wealthy or a noble man, as in the face 
 of heaven, must needs sink to the centre, when they are told to go forth 
 where every fat and fair countenance is set against them like a flint. 
 With such objectors I will have nothing to do, until they learn out of 
 the Scriptures whence the strength of Israel cometh, and with what 
 arms the lion of the tribe of Judah doth triumph over His foes. They 
 need to learn what are the first principles of that kingdom, concerning 
 the high offices of which the present discourse is held ; and they must 
 be given into the hands of some wardens of the outports, to be a little 
 instructed in the vulgar language and household customs of the holy 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 103 
 
 land, before they can be admitted to speculate on these its high and 
 noble commissions, of which their jokes and sarcasms do only betray 
 their gross and blinded ignorance. But, on the other hand, every 
 objection and doubt which presents itself in a serious frame of truth, 
 and breathes the brotherly spirit which is proper to the disciples of 
 Christ, I promise to do my endeavour to' remove out of the way, that 
 I may carry the greater consent of my readers along with me to the 
 question, how this constitution will answer in practice. And for the 
 purpose of hearing all that can be said against Messiah's institute, and 
 all that can be said in favour of the innovations which have usurped 
 its place, I delay at present going into the other parts of this discourse, 
 content that I have laid before the Church what seemeth to me the 
 sound doctrine concerning the missionary question. 
 
 Perhaps some one, able to defend it, may in the meantime rise up, 
 certainly many will rise up to impugn it; and though I should have 
 to undertake the work alone, I will, by the grace of God, most certainly 
 undertake to justify in practice what I have delineated in idea; being 
 convinced that, if, as Milton hath said, for the lo s of single truths 
 whole nations have fared the worse, for the loss of these few verses of 
 the gospel, the w r hole heathen world hath fared and will surely fare 
 the worse, and the day of their salvation be far, far off postponed. And 
 not the heathen world suffer alone, but the Church of Christ amongst 
 ourselves, to \\hose wounds this missionary constitution, if adopted, 
 would afford a healing balm. For being set up as sufficient, and up- 
 held as binding, the missionaries, from whatever sect proceeding, would 
 tend to unity of spirit, and recognise each other as brethren, and bring 
 back with them the happy oblivion of those uncharitable divisions, 
 which are fatal to the communion of the body of Christ, and destructive 
 to its vigorous exertions and great success at home. As it hath come 
 to pass in science, that astronomy, which is conversant with the distant 
 sphere, did bring to the earth the knowledge of geography, and extend 
 navigation and commerce, which are the best guarduns of community 
 
N ARIES AFTER 
 
 104 
 
 and peace among the divided nations ; so might it come to pas?, that 
 the missionaries who are conversant with dislmt regions, if chosen by- 
 one principle and made obedient to one walk and conversation, might 
 return home and become the mediators of our discozU^ and teach the 
 body of the Church to know its own constitution, which is charity; and 
 the condition of its welfare and prosperity, which is communion. 
 
 The argument for the perpetuity and unchangeableness of the 
 missionary constitution -is now concluded, and resteth upon these main 
 pillars of truth, the instructions of our Lord to the first missionaries, 
 four times recorded in the evangelists, unsupplemented, unabridged ; 
 the obedience thereto of all the apostles and first ministers of the 
 gospel, whose record is in the Scriptures, (their deviations, w r hen they 
 do deviate, being always by excess, and never by defect, of our Lord's 
 injunctions ;) the necessary law of the Spirit's operation ; the constant 
 condition of God's chosen messengers from the time of the patriarchs ; 
 the constant and unchanging form of the work which they have to do 
 in converting the nations ; and the perfect keeping which there is 
 between the form of the missionary as given by our Lord, and the 
 other parts of the Christan institution. I am aware how this position 
 is to be assailed by those who have built up a system of administration 
 on which they have set their heart to call it perfect and infallible, and 
 which I charge as exceedingly imperfect, destined to much improve- 
 ment, and with its improvement, destined to much greater simplicity 
 and larger success. And, I am alive to the inveteracy of hatred, and 
 the injustice of argument, with which this position will be treated ; and 
 conceive it right to put the Christian Church upon their guard, that 
 they sell not this question, in which the present and future generations 
 of the world are concerned, to the highest names upon a subscription 
 list, or discern it by the ostracism of the people, or yield it to the voice 
 of a hireling and sectarian press: which courts are not competent to 
 the issue. I solemnly charge the Church, by my authority of a minister 
 ordained to keep and watch over the verities of the holy gospel, that 
 
THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. Io - 
 
 they determine the issue that will be joined between us by a trial of 
 these six counts : 1st, Whether Christ's instructions were for the first 
 journey, or for all the journeys of His missionaries. 2d, Whether the 
 apostles walked in them or not ; and if they deviated, whether they 
 deviated in the spirit or from the spirit of these instructions. 3d, 
 Whether the Holy Ghost, in proportion as He possesseth the spirit of 
 a man, doth not lift him out of worldly dependence into an. assured 
 faith upon the providence and promises of God. 4th, Whether God's 
 preachers and prophets and missionaries, by whom He extended and 
 redeemed His Church, from the time it was the single family of Jacob 
 down to the time that the Lion of the tribe of Judah came, were not 
 stripped bare of earthly refuges and reliances before being employed, or 
 brought to that condition before being prospered in their work. 5th, 
 Whether the obstacles to the spiritual kingdom, which God heretofore 
 chose things that are not to bring to naught, be not still the same, and 
 by the same means to be overcome. 6th, Whether this idea and outward 
 form of the missionary, contained in Messiah's instructions, be not con- 
 sistent and in keeping with the idea of a pastor, with the idea of a private 
 Christian, and every other idea which is revealed by Christ for the 
 redeeming and prefecting of the fallen condition of humanity. Upon 
 these six counts I will risk the issue and stand by the award of the 
 question, Whether Messiah's constitution was intended for an 
 unchangeable constitution in the Church, or is to be patched and 
 mended, helped and repaired, and accommodated by wiser heads to the 
 changing condition of the world. Whether, in this great work, the 
 catholic Church is to act upon a common principle and be guided by a 
 common law, or each sect of it to adopt a principle which may seem to 
 it the most expedient, and follow a rule which may appear to it the 
 most wise. Whether the churches which they may be honoured to 
 plant, are to have the character of the order that planteth them, like 
 the Jesuit settlements of Paraguay; or to have the character of the 
 primitive churches, which were of one heart and mind, because the 
 
io6 
 
 MISSIONARIES AFTER THE APOSTOLICAL SCHOOL. 
 
 apostles were obedient to the instructions of one common Lord. 
 Whether, in fine, we are to open in the hearts of our missionaries 
 inlets to every spirit of hypocrisy, avarice, and ambition, and close as 
 many inlets of the SPIRIT OF TRUTH, quenching by our prudences 
 and policies of one everlas ting Spirit of God, and "giving vent to as 
 many spirits, crusading, Jesuitical, commercial, or political, as there 
 are diverse ages in the Church, which are not, like the ages of the 
 world, fourfold, of gold, of silver, of brass, of iron, but manifold, 
 according to the degree of impurity and incompleteness in the doctrine 
 which is preached, and the degree of laxness or lordliness in the 
 discipline which is administered in the churches. 
 
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